LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



BATTLE FOR BREAD 



SERIES OF SERMONS 



RELATING TO 



LABOR AND CAPITAL, 



Rev. T. DeWITT TALMAGE, D.D. 



DELIVERED BY 



Jul 16 1886. 



NEW YORK: 

J. S. OGILVIE AND COMPANY, 

31 Rose Street, 



|T»B UBHAftt 1 

iOf CONGRESS 

iWAfHI»GT22. 



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<*?£&> 



POPULAR SERMONS. 

Uniform in style and price with this volume. 
The Wedding Ring. 

By Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage, D.D. 

Good News. 

By Sam Jones and Sam Small. 

Joyful Tidings. 

By Sam Jones and Sam Small. 

Ten Days with D. L. Moody. 

Mailed on receipt of price. 



Copyright, 1886, by J. S. Ogilvie and Company. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 



THE LABOR QUESTION. 

"The earth was without form and void ; and dark- 
ness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters." — Gene- 
sis 1:2. 

Out in space there hung a great chunk of 
rock and mud and water and shell. Thousands 
of miles in diameter, more thousands of miles 
in circumference. A great mass of ugliness, 
confusion, and distortion, uselessness, ghastli- 
ness, and horror. It seemed like a great com- 
mons on which smashed-up worlds were 
dumped. It was what poetry and prose, scien- 
tist and Christian agree in calling chaos. Out 
of that black, rough, shapeless egg our beauti- 
ful world was hatched. God stood over that 
original 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD, 



ANARCHY OF ELEMENTS 

and said : " Atlantic Ocean, you go right away 
and lie down there ! Pacific Ocean, you sleep 
there ! Caucasian range of mountains, you 
stand there ! Mount Washington, you be sen- 
tinel there ! Mont Blanc, you put on your cor- 
onet of crystal there ! Mississippi, you march 
there, and Missouri you marry it there !" And 
He gathered in His Almighty hands the sand 
and mud and rock, and rolled and heaved and 
moulded and dented and compressed them into 
shape, and then dropped them in four places ; 
and the one was Asia, and another was Europe, 
and another Africa, and another America, 
North and South. 

SOCIAL CHAOS THREATENED. 

That original chaos was like the confusion 
and anarchy into which the human race ever 
and anon has a tendency to plunge. God has 
said : " Let there be light of law, light of jus- 
tice, light of peace, light of love !" " No ! 
No !" say anarchic voices, " let there be dark- 
ness, let there be cut-throatery, let there be 
eternal imbroglio, let there be chaos." 

Such a social condition many are expecting 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 5 

because of the overshadowing contest between 
Labor and Capital ; there has not been an intel- 
ligent man or woman during the last two 
months who has not asked the question, 
" Shall we have bloody revolution in this 
country ?" I have heard many answer the 
question in the affirmative ; I answer it in the 
negative. 

THE CHURCH AS PEACEMAKER. 

There may be and there have been terrific 
outbursts of popular frenzy, but there will be no 
anarchy, for the Church of Christ, the mightiest 
and grandest institution of the planet, shall, lay- 
ing hold of the strength of the eternal God, 
come out, and putting one hand on the shoul- 
der of Labor, and the other on the shoulder of 
Capital, say, " I come in the name of the God 
who turned chaos into magnificent order, to 
settle this dispute by the principles of eternal 
justice and kindness ; and now I command you, 
take your hands off of each other's throats.'' 
The only impartial institution on this subject is 
the Church, for it is made up of both capitalists 
and laborers, and was founded by Christ, who 
was a carpenter, and so has a right to speak for 
all laborers, and who owns the earth and the 



6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

solar system and the universe, and so can speak 
for the capitalists. 

As for myself, as an individual I have a right 
to be heard. My father was a farmer and my 
grandfather, and they had to work for a living ; 
and every dollar I own I earned by the sweat of 
my own brow, and I owe no man anything, and 
if any obligation has escaped my memory, come 
and present your bill when I descend from this 
pulpit, and I will pay you on the spot. I am 
going. to say all that I think and feel on this 
subject, and without any reservation, asking 
your prayers that I may be divinely directed in 
this important series of Sabbath morning dis- 
courses. 

That Labor has grievances I will show you 
plainly before I get through this course of ser- 
mons. That Capital has had outrages com- 
mitted upon it I will make evident beyond dis- 
pute. But there are right and wrong ways of 
attempting a reformation. 

When I say there will be no return to social 
chaos, I do not underrate the awful 

PERIL OF THESE TIMES. 

We must admit that the tendency is toward rev- 
olution. Great throngs gather at some points 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 7 

of disturbance in almost all our cities. Rail- 
trains hurled over the rocks. Workmen beaten 
to death within sight of their wives and chil- 
dren. Factories assailed by mobs. The faith- 
ful police of our cities exhausted by vigilance 
night and day. In some cases the military 
called out. The whole country asking the 
question, " What next ?" A part of Belgium 
one great riot. Germany and Austria keeping 
their workmen quiet only by standing armies 
so vast that they are eating out the life of those 
nations. The only reason that Ireland is in 
peace is because she is hoping for Home Rule 
and the triumphs of Gladstonism. The labor 
quarrel is hemispheric, aye, a world-wide quar- 
rel, and the whole tendency is toward anarchy. 
But one way in which we may avoid anarchy 
is by letting the people know 

WHAT ANARCHY IS. 

We must have the wreck pointed out in order 
to steer clear of it. Anarchy is abolition of 
right of property. It makes your store and 
your house and your money and your family 
mine, and mine yours. It is wholesale robbery. 
It is every man's hand against every other man. 
It is arson and murder and rapine and lust and 



8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

death triumphant. It means no law, no church, 
no defence, no rights, no happiness, no God. 
It means hell let loose on earth, and society a 
combination of devils incarnate. It means ex- 
termination of everything good and the corona- 
tion of everything infamous. Do you want it ? 
Will you have it ? Before you let it get a good 
foothold in America take a good look at the 
dragon. 

Look at Paris, where for a few days it held 
sway, the gutters red with blood and the walks 
down the street a stepping between corpses, the 
Archbishop shot as he tries to quell the mob, 
and every man and woman armed with knife or 
pistol or bludgeon. Let this country take one 
good, clear, scrutinizing look at anarchy before 
it is admitted, and it will never be allowed to 
set up its reign in our borders. No ; there is 
too much good sense dominant in this country 
to permit anarchy. All good people will, to- 
gether with the officers of civil government, 
cry " Peace !" and it will be re-established. 
Meanwhile, my brotherly counsel is to 

THREE CLASSES OF LABORERS. 

First, to those who are at work. Stick to it. 
Do not amid the excitement of these times drop 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 9 

your employment, hoping that something bet- 
ter will turn up. He who gives up work now, 
whether he be railroad man, mechanic, farmer, 
clerk, or any other kind of employee, will prob- 
ably give it up for starvation. You may not 
like the line of steamers that you are sailing in, 
but do not jump overboard in the middle of the 
Atlantic. Be a little earlier than usual at your 
post of work while this turmoil lasts, and attend 
to your occupation with a little more assiduity 
than has ever characterized you. 

My brotherly counsel, in the second place, is 
to those who have resigned work. It is best 
for you and best for everybody to go back im- 
mediately. Do not wait to see what others do. 
Get on board the train of national prosperity 
before it starts again, for start it will, start soon 
and start mightily. Last year in the city of 
New York there were 45 general strikes and 
177 shop strikes. Successful strikes, 97; strikes 
lost, 34; strikes pending at the time the statist- 
ics were made, 59; strikes compromised, 32. 
Would you like me to tell you who will make 
the most out of the present almost universal 
strike ? I can and will. Those will make the 
most out of it who go first to work. 

My third word of brotherly advice is to the 



10 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

nearly two million people who could not get 
work before this trouble began, and who have 
themselves and their families to support, to go 
now and take the vacated places. Go in and 
take those places a million and a half strong. 
Green hands you may be now, but you will 
not be green hands long. My sentiment is full 
liberty for all who want to strike to do so, and 
full liberty for all who want to take the vacated 
places. Other industries will open for those 
who are now taking vacation, for we have only 
opened the outside door of this continent, and 
there is room in this country for eight hundred 
million people, and for each one of them a 
home and a livelihood and a God ! 

PLENTY OF ROOM. 

So, however others may feel about this excite- 
ment, as wide as the continent, I am not scared 
a bit. The storm will hush. Christ will put 
His foot upon it as upon agitated Galilee. As 
at the beginning, chaos will give place to order 
as the Spirit of God moves upon the waters. 
But hear it, workingmen of America! Your 
first step toward light and betterment of condi- 
tion will be an assertion of your individual in- 
dependence from the dictation of your fellow- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. II 

workmen. You are a free man, and let no 
organization come between you and your best 
interests. Do not let any man, or any body of 
men, tell you where you shall work, or where 
you shall not work, when you shall work, or 
when you shall not work. If a man wants to 
belong to a labor organization, let him belong. 
If he does not want to belong to a labor organ- 
ization, let him have perfect liberty to stay out. 
You own yourself. Let no man put a manacle 
on your hand or foot or head or heart. 

I belong to a ministerial association that 
meets once a week. I love all the members 
very much. We may help each other in a hun- 
dred ways, but when that association shall tell 
me to quit my work and go somewhere else ; 
that I must stop right away because a brother 
minister has been badly treated down in Texas, 
I will say to that ministerial association, "Get 
thee behind me, Satan !" Furthermore, I have 
a right to resign my pastorate of this church 
and say to the people, " I decline to work for 
you any longer. I am going. Good-by." But 
I have no right, after I have quit this pulpit, to 
linger around the doors on Sunday mornings 
and evenings with a shot-gun to intimidate or 
hinder the minister who comes to take my 



12 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

place. I may quit my place and continue to be 
a gentleman, but when I interfere with my suc- 
cessor in this pulpit I become a criminal, and 
deserve nothing better than thin soup in a tin 
bowl in Sing Sing Prison. Your first duty, 
oh laboring man, is to your family ! Let no one 
but Almighty God dictate to you how you 
shall support them. Work when you please, 
where you please, at what you please, and allow 
no one for a hundred millionth part of a second 
to interfere with your right. When we emerge 
from the present unhappiness, as we soon will, 
we shall find many tyrannies broken, and Labor 
and Capital will march shoulder to shoulder. 

MUTUAL DEPENDENCE. 

This day I declare the mutual dependence of 
Labor and Capital. An old tentmaker put it 
just right — I mean Paul — when he declared : 
"The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no 
need of thee." You have examined some elab- 
orate machinery — a thousand wheels, a thousand 
bands, a thousand levers, a thousand pulleys, 
but all controlled by one great water-wheel, all 
the parts adjoined so that if you jarred one part 
you jarred all the parts. Well, society is a great 
piece of mechanism, a thousand wheels, a thou- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 3 

sand pulleys, a thousand levers, but all con- 
trolled by one great and ever-revolving force — 
the wheel of God's providence. The profes- 
sions interdependent, all the trades interde- 
pendent. Capital and Labor interdependent, 
so that the man who lives in a mansion on the 
hill, and the man who breaks cobble-stones at 
the foot of the hill, affect each other s misfor- 
tune or prosperity. Dives cannot kick Laza- 
rus without hurting his own foot. They who 
throw Shadrach into the furnace, get their own 
faces scorched and blackened. No such thing 
as independence. Smite society at any one 
point and you smite the entire community. 

IDENTICAL INTERESTS. 

Relief will come to the working-classes of this 
country through a better understanding between 
Capital and Labor. Before the contest goes 
much further it will be found that their interests 
are identical ; what helps one helps both ; what 
injures one injures both. Until the crack of 
doom there will be no relief for the working- 
classes until there is a better understanding be- 
tween Labor and Capital and this war ends. 
Every speech that Capital makes against Labor 
is an adjournment of our national prosperity. 



14 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Every speech that Labor makes against Capital 
is an adjournment of our national prosperity. 
The capitalists of the country, so far as I know 
them, are successful laborers. If the capitalists 
in this house to-day would draw their gloves, 
you would see the broken finger-nail, the scar 
of an old blister, here and there a stiffened 
finger-joint. The great publishers of New 
York and Philadelphia, so far as I know them, 
were book-binders or printers on small pay. 
The carriage manufacturers of the country used 
to sandpaper the wagon-bodies in the wheel- 
wright's shop. 

PHILANTHROPIC CAPITALISTS. 

Peter Cooper was a glue-maker. No one 
begrudged him his millions of dollars, for he 
built Cooper Institute and swung open its 
doors for every poor man's ^on, and said to the 
day laborer : " Send your boy up to my In- 
stitute if you want him to have a splendid edu- 
cation. " And a young man of this church was 
the other day walking in Greenwood Cemetery, 
and he saw two young men putting flowers on 
the grave of Peter Cooper. My friend sup- 
posed the young men were relatives of Peter 
Cooper, and decorated his grave for that reason. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 5 

" No," they said, "we put these flowers on his 
grave because it was through him we got our 
education. " Abraham Van Nest was a harness- 
maker in New York. Through economy and 
industry and skill he got a great fortune. He 
gave away to help others hundreds of thousands 
of dollars. I shall never forget the scene when 
I, a green country lad, stopped at his house, 
and after passing the evening with him he came 
to the door and came outside and said : " Here, 
De Witt, is fifty dollars to get books with. 
Don't say anything about it." And I never 
did till the good old man was gone. Henry 
Clay was "the Mill-boy of the Slashes." Hugh 
Miller, a stone-mason ; Columbus, a weaver ; 
H alley, a soap-boiler ; Arkwright, a barber ; 
the learned Bloomfield, a shoemaker ; Ho- 
garth, an engraver of pewter plate, and 
Horace Greeley started life in New York 
with ten dollars and seventy-five cents in his 
pocket. 

The distance between Capital and Labor is 
not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara 
suspension bridge ; it is only a step, and the 
laborers here will cross over and become capi- 
talists, and the capitalists will cross over and 
become laborers. Would to God they would 



1 6 THE BATTLE FOE 

shake hands while they are crossing, these from 
one side, and those from the other side. 



WHO THE COMBATANTS ARE. 

The combatants in this great conflict be- 
tween Capital and Labor are chiefly, on the 
one side, the men of fortune, and, on the other 
hand, men who could get labor, but will not 
have it, will not stick to it. It is the hand curs- 
ing the eye, or the eye cursing the hand. I 
want it understood that the laborers are the 
highest style of capitalists. Where is their in- 
vestment? In the bank? No. In railroad 
stock ? No. Their muscles, their nerves, their 
bones, their mechanical skill, their physical 
health, are the highest kind of capital. The 
man who has two feet, and two ears, and two 
eyes, and ten fingers, owns a machinery that 
puts into nothingness Corliss's engine and all 
the railroad rolling stock, and all the carpet 
and screw and cotton factories on the planet. 
I wave the flag of truce this morning between 
these contestants. I demand a cessation of 
hostilities between Labor and Capital. What 
is good for one is good for both. What is bad 
for one is bad for both. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 7 

CO-OPERATION. 

Again, relief will come to the working- 
classes of this country through co-operative 
association. I am not now referring to trades- 
unions. We may hereafter discuss that ques- 
tion. But I refer to that plan by which laborers 
become their own capitalists, taking their sur- 
pluses and putting them together and carrying 
on great enterprises. In England and Wales 
there are seven hundred and sixty-five co-opera- 
tive associations, with three hundred thousand 
members, with a capital of fourteen millions of 
dollars, doing business in one year to the 
amount of fifty-seven millions dollars. In Troy, 
N. Y., there was a co-operative iron foundry 
association. It worked well long enough to 
give an idea of what could be accomplished 
when the experiment is fully developed. 

You say that there have been great failures in 
that direction. I admit it. Every great move- 
ment at the start is a failure. The application 
of steam power a failure, electro-telegraphy a 
failure, railroading a failure, but after awhile the 
world's chief successes. I hear some say, 
" Why, it is absurd to talk of a surplus to be 
put into this co-operative association, when men 



1 8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

can hardly get enough to eat and wear and take 
care of their families." I reply, Put into my 
hand the money spent in the last five years in 
this country by the laboring classes for rum and 
tobacco, and I will start a co-operative institu- 
tion of monetary power that will surpass any 
financial institution in the United States. 

TAKEN INTO CONFIDENCE. 

Again, I remark, that relief will come to the 
working-classes through more thorough dis- 
covery on the part of employers that it is best 
for them to let their employes know just how 
matters stand. The most of the capitalists of 
to-day are making less than six per cent, less 
than five per cent., less than four per cent, on 
their investments. Here and there is an ana- 
conda swallowing down everything, but such are 
the exceptions. It is often the case that em- 
ployes blame their employer because they sup- 
pose he is getting along grandly, when he is 
oppressed to the last point of oppression. I 
knew a manufacturer who employed more than 
a thousand hands. I said to him : " Do you 
ever have any trouble with your workmen ? do 
you have any strikes ?" "No," he said. 
" What ! in this time of angry discussion be- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 9 

tween Capital and Labor, no trouble ?" " None 
at all — none." I said: u How is that?" 
"Well,"' he said, "I have a way of my own. 
Every little while I call my employes together 
and I say, — ' Now, boys, I want to show you 
how matters stand. What you turned out this 
year brought so much. You see it isn't as much 
as we got last year. I can't afford to pay you as 
much as I did. Now, you know I put all my 
means in this business. What do you think 
ought to be my percentage, and what wages 
ought I to pay you ? Come, let us settle this. 
And," said that manufacturer, "we are always 
unanimous. When we suffer, we all suffer 
together. When we advance, we advance to- 
gether, and my men would die for me." But 
when a man goes among his employes with 
a supercilious air, and drives up to his factory 
as though he were the autocrat of the universe, 
with the sun and the moon in his vest-pockets, 
moving amid the wheels of the factory, chiefly 
anxious lest a greased or smirched hand should 
touch his immaculate broadcloth, he will see at 
the end he has made an awful mistake. I 
think that employers will find out after awhile 
that it is to their interest, as far as possible, to 
explain matters to their employes. You be 



20 THE BATTLE FOR BRFATV 

frank with them, and they will be frank with 
you. 

Again, I remark, relief will come to the 
laboring classes through the religious rectifica- 
tion of the country. Labor is appreciated and 
rewarded just in proportion as a country is 
Christianized. Show me a community that is 
thoroughly infidel, and I will show you a com- 
munity where wages are small. Show me a 
community that is thoroughly Christianized, 
and I will show you a community where wages 
are comparatively large. How do I account 
for it ? The philosophy is easy. Our religion 
is a democratic religion. It makes the owner 
of the mill understand he is a brother to all the 
operatives in that mill. Born of the same 
heavenly Father, to lie down in the same dust, 
to be saved by the same supreme mercy. No 
putting on of airs in the sepulchre or in the 
judgment. 

An engineer in a New England factory gets 
sleepy, and he does not watch the steam-gauge, 
and there is a wild thunder of explosion, and 
the owner of the mill and one of the workmen 
are slain. The two slain men come up toward 
the gate of heaven. The owner of the mill 
knocks at the gate. The celestial gate-keeper 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 21 

cries, " Who is there ?" The reply comes, " I 
was the owner of a factory at Fall River, where 
there was an explosion just now, and I lost my 
life, and I want to come in." " Why do you 
want to come in, and by what right do you 
come in ?" asks the celestial gate-keeper. 
" Oh," says the man, " I employed two or three 
hundred hands ! I was a great man at Fall 
River." "You employed two or three hundred 
men," says the gate-keeper, " but how much 
Christian grace did you employ ?" "None at 
all," says the owner of the mill. " Step back," 
says the celestial gate-keeper ; " no admittance 
here for you." Right after comes up the poor 
workman. He knocks at the gate. The shining 
gate-keeper says, "Who is there?" He says, 
" I am a poor workman ; I come up from the 
explosion at Fall River ; I would like to enter." 
" What is your right to come in here ?" asks the 
shining gate-keeper. The workman says, " I 
heard that a shining Messenger came forth from 
your world to our world to redeem it ; I have 
been a bad man ; I used to swear when I hurt 
my hand with the wheel ; I used to be angry ; I 
have done a great many wrong things, but I 
confessed it all to the Messenger that came 
from your country, and after I confessed it He 



22 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

told me to come up here ; and that you may 
know I have a right to come, there is His name 
on the palm of my hand ; here is his name 
on my forehead." Then there is a sound of 
working pulleys, and the gates lift, and the 
workingman goes in. There was a vast differ- 
ence between the funerals at Fall River. The 
owner of the mill had a great funeral. The 
poor workingman had a small funeral. The 
man who came up on his own pompous re- 
sources was shut out of heaven. The poor 
man, trusting to the grace of Jesus Christ, en- 
tered. So, you see, it is 

A DEMOCRATIC RELIGION. 

I do not care how much money you have, you 
have not enough money to buy your way 
through the gate. My friends, you need to 
saturate our populations with the religion of 
Christ, and wages will be larger, employers will 
be more considerate, all the tides of thrift will 
set in. I have the highest authority for saying 
that godliness is profitable for the life that now 
is. It pays for the employer. It pays for the 
employe. The hard hand of the wheel and 
the soft hand of the counting-room will clasp 
each other yet. They will clasp eaoh other in 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 23 

congratulation. They will clasp each other on 
the glorious morning of the Millennium, The 
hard hand will say, " I ploughed the desert into 
a garden ;" the soft hand will reply, "I fur- 
nished the seed." The one hand will say, "I 
thrashed the mountains ;" the other hand will 
say, " I paid for the flail." The one hand will 
say, "I hammered the spear into a pruning- 
hook ;" and the other hand will answer, " I 
signed the treaty of peace that made that pos- 
sible." Then Capital and Labor will lie down 
together, and the lion and the lamb, and the 
leopard and the kid, and there will be nothing 
to hurt or destroy in all God's holy mount, for 
the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. 



24 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 



THE TREATMENT. OF EMPLOYES. 

" If ye bite and devour one another, take heed 
that ye be not consumed one of another/' — Gal. 5:15. 

" Look not every man on his own things, but every 
man also on the things of others. — Phil. 2:4. 

The labor agitation will soon quiet. The 
mills will again open, the railroads resume their 
traffic, our national prosperities again start. Of 
course, the damage done by the strikes cannot 
immediately be repaired. Wages will not be 
so high as they were. Spasmodically they may 
be higher, but they will drop lower. Strikes, 
whether right or wrong, always injure laborers 
more than the capitalists. You will see this in 
the starvation of next winter. Boycotting and 
violence and murder never pay. They are dif- 
ferent 

STAGES OF ANARCHY. 

God never blessed murder. The worst use 
you can put a man to is to kill him. Blow up 
to-morrow all the country seats on the banks 
of the Hudson, and all the fine houses on 
Madison Square, and Brooklyn Heights, and 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 2$ 

Brooklyn Hill, and Rittenhouse Square, and 
Beacon Street, and all the bricks and timber 
and stones will just fall back on the bare head 
of American labor. 

The worst enemies of the working classes in 
the United States and Ireland are their 
demented coadjutors. Assassination — the 
assassinations of Lord Frederick Cavendish 
and Mr. Burke in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ire- 
lond, in the attempt to avenge the wrongs of 
Ireland, only turned away from that afflicted 
people millions of sympathizers. The attempts 
to blow up the House of Commons, in Lon- 
don, had only this effect — to throw out of em- 
ployment tens of thousands of innocent Irish 
people in England. In this country the torch 
put to the factories that have discharged hands 
for good or bad reasons ; obstructions on the 
rail-tracks, in front of midnight express trains, 
because the offenders do not like the president 
of the company ; strikes on shipboard the hour 
they were going to sail, or in printing offices 
the hour the paper was to go to press, or in the 
mines the day the coal was to be delivered, or 
on house scaffoldings so the builder fails in 
keeping his contract — all these are only a hard 
blow on the head of American labor, and crip- 



26 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

pie its arms, and lame its feet, and pierce its 
heart Traps sprung suddenly upon employers 
and violence never took one knot out of the 
knuckles of toil, or put one farthing of wages 
into a callous palm. Barbarism will never 
cure the wrongs of civilization. Mark that ! 

A KING THREATENED BY A MILLER. 

Frederick the Great admired some land near 
his palace at Potsdam, and he resolved to get 
it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the 
miller three times the value of the property. 
The miller would not take it because it was the 
old homstead, and he felt much as Naboth 
felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. 
Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible 
man, and he ordered the miller into his 
presence, and the king with a stick in his hand 
— a stick with which he sometimes struck the 
officers of State — said to the miller : " Now, I 
have offered you three times the value of that 
property, and if you won't sell it I'll take it any- 
how." The miller said : "Your Majesty, you 
won't." " Yes," said the king, " I will take it." 
" Then," said the miller, " if your Majesty coes 
take it I will sue you in the Chancery Court." 
At that threat Frederick the Great yielded his 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 2J 

infamous demand. And the most imperious 
outrage against the working classes will yet 
cower before the law. Violence and opposition 
to the law will never accomplish anything, but 
righteousness and according to the law will ac- 
complish it. 

THE WIDENING CHASM. 

But gradually the damages done the laborer 
by the strikes will be repaired, and some im- 
portant things ought now to be said. The 
whole tendency of our times, as you have 
noticed, is to make the chasm betweeu em- 
ployer and emyloye wider and wider. In olden 
time the head man of the factory, the master 
builder, the capitalist, the head man of the 
firm, worked side by side with their employes, 
working sometimes at the same bench, dining 
at the same table ; and there are those here 
who can remember the time when the clerks of 
large commercial establishments were accus- 
tomed to board with the head men of the firm. 

All that is changed, and the tendency is to 
make the distance between employer and em- 
ploye wider and wider. The tendency is to 
make the employe feel that he is wronged by 
the success of the capitalist, and to make the 



28 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

capitalist feel : " Now, my laborers are only 
beasts of burden ; I must give so much money 
for so much drudgery, just so many pieces of 
silver for so many beads of sweat." In other 
words, the bridge of sympathy is broken down 
at both ends. That feeling was well described 
by Thomas Carlyle when he said : " Plugson, 
of St. Dolly Undershot, buccaneer-like, says to 
his men : 'Noble spinners, this is the hun- 
dredth thousand we have gained, wherein I 
mean to dwell and plant my vineyards. The 
hundred thousand pound is mine, the daily 
wage was yours. Adieu, noble spinners ; drink 
my health with this groat each, which I give 
you over and above." 

Now, what we want is to rebuild that bridge 
of sympathy, and I put the trowel to one of the 
abutments to-day, and I preach more especially 
this morning to employers as such, although 
what I have to say will be appropriate to all 
who are in the house. 

THREE BRUTAL PRINCIPLES. 

The outrageous behavoir of a multitude of 
laborers toward their employers during the last 
three months — behavior infamous and worthy 
of most condign punishment — may have in- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 29 

duced some employers to neglect the real 
Christian duties that they owe to those whom 
they employ. Therefore I want to say to you 
whom I confront face to face, and those to 
whom these words may come, that all ship- 
owners, all capitalists, all commercial firms, all 
master builders, all housewives, are bound to be 
interested in the entire welfare of their subor- 
dinates. Years ago some one gave three pre- 
scriptions for becoming a millionaire : First, 
spend your life in getting and keeping the earn- 
ings of other people ; secondly, have no anxiety 
about the worriments, the losses, the disappoint- 
ments of others ; thirdly, do not mind the fact 
that your vast wealth implies the poverty of a 
great many people. Now, there is not a man 
in my audience who would consent to go out 
into life with those three principles to earn a 
fortune. It is your desire to do your whole 
duty to the men and women in your service. 

THE RATE OF PAY. 

First of all, then, pay as large wages as are 
reasonable and as your business will afford. 
Not necessarily what others pay, certainly not 
what your hired help say you must pay, for 
that is tyranny on the part of labor unbearable. 



30 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

The right of a laborer to tell his employer 
what he must pay implies the right of an em- 
ployer to compel a man into a service whether 
he will or not, and either of those ideas is 
despicable. When an employer allows a labor- 
er to say what he must do or have his business 
ruined, and the employer submits to it, he does 
every business man in the United States a 
wrong, and yields to a principle which, carried 
out, would dissolve society. Look over your 
affairs, and put yourselves in imagination in 
your laborer's place, and then pay him what be- 
fore God and your own conscience you think 
you ought to pay him. 

" God bless yous " are well in their place, 
but they do not buy coal nor pay house rent 
nor get shoes for the children. At the same 
time you, the employer, ought to remember 
through what straits and strains you got the 
fortune by which you built your store or run 
the factory. You are to remember that you 
take all the risks and the employe takes none, 
or scarcely any. You are to remember that 
there may be reverses in fortune, and that some 
new style of machinery may make your machin- 
ery valueless, or some new style of tariff set 
your business back hopelessly and forever. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 3 1 

You must take all that into consideration, and 
then pay what is reasonable. 

BIBLE INJUNCTIONS. 

Do not be too ready to cut down wages. As 
far as possible pay all, and pay promptly. 
There is a great deal of Bible teaching on this 
subject. Malachi : " I will be a swift witness 
against all sorcerers, and against all adulterers, 
and against those who oppress the hireling in 
his wages." Leviticus : " Thou shalt not keep 
the wages of the hireling all night unto the 
morning." Colossians : " Masters, give unto 
your servants that which is just and equal ; 
knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." 

So you see it is not a question between you 
and your employe so much as it is a question 
between you and God. 

Do not say to your employes : " Now, if 
you don't like this place get another," when 
you know they cannot get another. As far as 
possible once a year visit at their homes your 
clerks and your workmen. That is the only 
way you can become acquainted with their 
wants. You will by such process find out that 
there is a blind parent or a sick sister being 
supported. You will find some of your young 



32 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

men in rooms without any fire in winter, and in 
summer sweltering in ill-ventilated apartments. 
You will find how much depends on the wages 
you pay or withhold. 

BENEFICENT EMPLOYERS. 

Moreover, it is your duty as employer, as far 
as possible, to mould the welfare of the em- 
ploye. You ought to advise him about invest- 
ments, about life insurance, about savings 
banks. You ought to give him the benefit of 
your experience. There are hundreds and 
thousands of employers in this country and 
England, I am glad to say, who are settling in 
the very best possible way the destiny of their 
employes. Such men as Marshall, of Leeds ; 
Lister, of Bradford ; Akroyd, of Halifax ; and 
men so near at home it might offend their 
modesty, if I mentioned their names. These 
men have built reading-rooms, libraries, concert 
halls, afforded croquet lawns, cricket grounds, 
gymnasiums, choral societies for their employes, 
and they have not merely paid the wages on 
^Saturday night, but through the contentment 
and the thrift and the good morals of their 
employes, they are paying wages from genera- 
tion to generation forever. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 33 

Again, I counsel all employers to look well 
after the physical health of their subordinates. 
Do not put on them any unnecessary fatigue. 
I never could understand why the drivers on 
our city cars must stand all day when they 
might just as well sit down and drive. It seems 
to me most unrighteous that so many of the 
female clerks in our stores should be compelled 
to stand all day, and through those hours when 
there are but few or no customers. These peo- 
ple have aches and annoyance and weariness 
enough without putting upon them additional 
fatigue. Unless those female clerks must go 
up and down on the business of the store, let 
them sit down. 

Then, I would have you carry out this sani- 
tary idea, and put into as few hours as possible 
the work of the day. Some time ago — whether 
it has been changed I know not — there were 
one thousand grocer clerks in Brooklyn who 
went to business at five o'clock in the morning 
and continued until ten o'clock at night. Now, 
that is inhuman. It seems to me all the mer- 
chants in all departments ought, by simultane- 
ous movement, to come out in behalf of the 
early closing theory. These young men ought 
to have an opportunity of going to the Mercan- 



34 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

tile Library, to the reading-rooms, to the con- 
cert hall, to the gymnasium, to the church. 
They have nerves, they have brains, they have 
intellectual aspirations, they have immortal 
spirits. If they can do a good round day's 
work in the ten or eleven hours, you have no 
right to keep them harnessed for seventeen. 

But, above all, I charge you, O employers ! 
that you look after the moral and spiritual wel- 
fare of your employes. First, know where 
they spend their evenings. That decides every- 
thing. You do not want around your money 
drawer a young man who went last night to 
see Jack Sheppard / A man that comes into 
the store in the morning ghastly with mid- 
night revelry is not the man for your store. 
The young man who spends his evenings in the 
society of refined women, or in musical or ar- 
tistic circles, or in literary improvement, is the 
young man for your store. 

THE GUARDIAN OF EMPLOYES. 

Do not say of these young men : " If they 
do their work in the business hours, that is all 
I have to ask." God has made you that man's 
guardian. I want you to understand that 
many of these young men are orphans, or worse 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 35 

than orphans, flung out into society to strug- 
gle for themselves. A young man is pitched 
into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and a 
plank is pitched after him, and then he is told 
to take that and swim ashore. Treat that 
young man as you would like to have your son 
treated if you were dead. Do not tread on 
him. Do not swear at him. Do not send 
him on a useless errand. Say " Good-morn- 
ing" and " Good-night" and "Good-by." You 
are deciding that man's destiny for two worlds. 
One of my earliest remembrances is of 

OLD ARTHUR TAPPAN. 

There were many differences of opinion 
about his politics, but no one who ever knew 
Arthur Tappan, and knew him well, doubted 
his being an earnest Christian. In his store in 
New York he had a room where every morn- 
ing he called his employes together, and he 
prayed with them, read the Scriptures to them, 
sang with them, and then they entered on the 
duties of the day. On Monday morning the 
exercises differed, and he gathered the young 
men together and asked them where they had 
attended church, what had been their Sabbath 
experiences, and what had been the sermon. 



36 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Samuel Budget* had the largest business in 
the west of England. He had in a room of his 
warehouse a place pleasantly furnished with 
comfortable seats and " Fletchers Family De- 
votions" and Wesleyan Hymn-books, and he 
gathered his employes together every morn- 
ing, and having sung, they knelt down and 
prayed side by side — the employer and the em- 
ployes. Do you wonder at that man's suc- 
cess, and that though thirty years before he 
had been a partner in a small retail shop in a 
small village, at his death he bequeathed many 
millions. God can trust such a man as that 
with plenty of money. 

SIR TITUS SALT 

had wealth which was beyond computation, 
and at Saltaire, England, he had a church and 
a chapel built and supported by himself — the 
church for those who preferred the Episcopal 
service, and the chapel for those who preferred 
the Methodist service. At the opening of one 
of his factories he gave a great dinner, and there 
were thirty-five hundred people present, and in 
his after-dinner speech he said to these people 
gathered : " I cannot look around me and see 
this vast assemblage of friends and work-people 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 37 

without being moved. I feel greatly honored 
by the presence of the nobleman at my side, 
and I am especially delighted at the presence 
of my work-people. I hope to draw around 
me a population that will enjoy the beauties of 
this neighborhood — a population of well-paid, 
contented, happy operatives. I have given in- 
structions to my architects that nothing is to 
be spared to render the dwellings of the opera- 
tives a pattern to the country, and if my life is 
spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see 
contentment, satisfaction, and happiness around 
me." 

That is Christian character demonstrated; 
There are others in this country and in other 
lands on a smaller scale doing their best for 
their employes. They have not forgotten 
their own early struggles. They remember 
how they were discouraged, how hungry they 
were, and how cold and how tired they were, 
and though they may be sixty or seventy years 
of age, they know just how a boy feels between 
ten and twenty, and how a young man feels 
between twenty and thirty. They have not 
forgotten it. Those wealthy employers were 
not originally let down out of heaven with pul- 
leys of silk in a wicker basket, satin-lined, 



38 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

fanned by cherubic wings. They started in 
roughest cradle, on whose rocker misfortune 
put her violent foot, and tipped them into the 
cold world. Those old men are sympathetic 
with boys. 

LOOK AFTER THE FOREMAN. 

But you are not only to be kind to those 
who are under you — Christianly kind — but you 
are also to see that your boss workman, and 
your head clerks, and your agents, and your 
overseers in stores are kind to those under 
them. Sometimes a man will get a little brief 
authority in a store or in a factory, and while 
they are very courteous to you, the capitalist, 
or to you, the head man of the firm, they are 
most brutal in their treatment of those under 
them. God only knows what some of the 
lads suffer in the cellars and in the lofts of 
some of our great establishments. They have 
no one to appeal to. The time will come when 
their arm will be strong, and they can defend 
themselves, but not now. Alas ! for some of 
the cash boys and the messenger boys and the 
boys that sweep the store. Alas ! for some 
of them. Now, you capitalist, you, the head 
man of the firm, must look, supervise, see 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 39 

those all around you, investigate all beneath 
you. 

BE MERCIFUL. 

And, then, I charge you not to put unneces- 
sary temptation in the way of your young men. 
Do not keep large sums of money lying around 
unguarded. Know how much money there is 
in the till. Do not have the account books 
loosely kept. There are temptations inevit- 
able to young men, and enough of them, with- 
out your putting any unnecessary temptations 
in their way. Men in Wall Street, having 
thirty years of reputation for honesty, have 
dropped into Sing Sing and perdition, and you 
must be careful how you try a lad of fifteen. 
And if he do wrong, do not pounce on him 
like a hyena. If he prove himself unworthy of 
your confidence, do not call in the police, but 
take him home, tell why you dismissed him to 
those who will give him another chance. 
Many a young man has done wrong once who 
will never do wrong again. Ah ! my friends, I 
think we can afford to give everybody another 
chance, when God knows we should all have 
been in perdition if He had not given us ten 
thousand chances. 

Then, if in moving around your factory, or 



40 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

mill, or barn, or store you are inexorable with 
young men, God will remember it. Some 
day the wheel of fortune will turn, and you 
will be a pauper, and your daughter will go to 
the workhouse, and your son will die on the 
scaffold. If in moving among your young 
men you see one with an ominous pallor of 
cheek, or you hear him coughing behind the 
counter, say to him : " Stay home a day or two 
and rest, or go out and breathe the breath of 
the hills. " If his mother die, do not demand 
that on the day after the funeral he be in the 
store. Give him, at least, a week to get over 
that which he will never get over. 

A BRAVE GENERAL. 

Employers, urge upon your employes, above 
all, a religious life. So far from that, how is 
it, young men ? Instead of being cheered on 
the road to heaven, some of you are caricatured, 
and it is a hard thing for you to keep your 
Christian integrity in that store or factory 
where there are so many hostile to religion. 
Ziethen, a brave general under Frederick the 
Great, was a Christian. Frederick the Great 
was an infidel. One day Ziethen, the vener- 
able, white-haired general, asked to be excused 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 41 

from military duty that he might attend the 
holy sacrament. He was excused. A few 
days after Ziethen was dining with the king and 
with many notables of Prussia, when Freder- 
ick the Great, in a jocose way, said: "Well, 
Ziethen, how did the sacrament of last Friday 
digest ?" The venerable old warrior arose, and 
said : " For your Majesty I have risked my 
life many a time on the battle-field, and for 
your Majesty I would be willing any time to 
die ; but you do wrong when you insult the 
Christian religion. You will forgive me if I, 
your old military servant, cannot bear in silence 
any insult to my Lord and my Saviour." 
Frederick the Great leaped to his feet, and he 
put out his hand, and he said : " Happy Zie- 
then, forgive me, forgive me !" 

Oh, there are many being scoffed at for their 
religion ! and I thank God there are many 
men as brave as Ziethen. Go to heaven your- 
self, O employer ! Take all your people with 
you. Soon you will be through buying and 
selling, and through with manufacturing and 
building, and God will ask you : "Where are 
all those people over whom you had so great 
influence ? Are they here ? Will they be 
here ?" O shipowners ! into what harbor will 



42 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

your crew sail ? Oh, you merchant grocers ! 
are those young men that under your care are 
providing food for the bodies and families of 
men, to go starved forever ? Oh, you manu- 
facturers of this United States ! with so many 
wheels flying, and so many bands pulling, and 
so many new patterns turned out, and so many 
goods shipped, are the spinners, are the carmen, 
are the draymen, are the salesmen, are the 
watchers of your establishments working out 
everything but their own salvation ? Can it be 
that, having those people under your care five, 
ten, twenty years, you have made no everlasting 
impression for good on their immortal souls ? 
God turn us all back from such selfishness, and 
teach us to live for others and not for our- 
selves. Christ sets us the example of sacrifice, 
and so do many of His disciples. 

A SELF-SACRIFICING PHYSICIAN. 

One summer in California a gentleman who 
had just removed from the Sandwich Islands 
told me this incident. He said one of the 
Sandwich Islands, is devoted to lepers. People 
getting sick of the leprosy on the other islands 
are sent to that isle of lepers. They never 
come off. They are in different stages of dis- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 43 

ease, but all who die on that island die of 
leprosy. 

On one of the islands there was a physician 
who always wore his hand gloved, and it was 
often discussed why he always had a glove on 
that hand under all circumstances. One day 
he came to the authorities, and he withdrew 
his glove, and he said to the officers of the law: 
"You see on that hand a spot of the leprosy, 
and that I am doomed to die. I might hide 
this for a little while and keep away from the 
isle of lepers ; but I am a physician, and I can 
go on that island and administer to the suffer- 
ings of those who are farther gone in the dis- 
ease, and I should like to go now. It would 
be selfish in me to stay amid these luxurious 
surroundings when I might be of so much help 
to the wretched. Send me to the isle of the 
lepers." They, seeing the spot of leprosy, of 
course took the man into custody. He bade 
farewell to his family and his friends. It was 
an agonizing farewell. He could never see 
them again. He was taken to the isle of the 
lepers, and there wrought among the sick until 
prostrated by his own death, which at last came. 
Oh, that was magnificent self-denial, magnifi- 
cent sacrifice, only surpassed by that of Him 



44 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

who exiled Himself from his home in heaven 
to this leprous island of a world, that He might 
physician our wounds, and weep our griefs, and 
die our deaths, turning the isle of a leprous 
world into a great blooming, paradisical gar- 
den ! Whether employer or employe, let us 
catch that spirit. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 45 



HARDSHIPS OF WORKINGMEN. 

"So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith, and 
he that smootheth with the hammer him that smiteth 
the anvil." — Isa. 41:7. 

You have seen in factories a piece of mech- 
anism passing from hand to hand, and from 
room to room, and one mechanic will smite it, 
and another will flatten it, and another will 
chisel it, and another will polish it, until the 
work be done. And so the prophet describes 
the idols of olden times as being made, part of 
them by one hand, part of them by another 
hand. Carpentry comes in, gold-beating comes 
in, smithery comes in, and three or four styles 
of mechanism are employed. "So the carpen- 
ter encouraged the goldsmith, and he that 
smootheth with the hammer him that smote 
the anvil." When they met, they talked over 
their work, and they helped each other on with 
it It was a very bad kind of business ; it was 
making idols which were an insult to the Lord 
of heaven. I have thought if men in bad work 
can 



46 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER, 

ought not men engaged in honest artisanship 
and mechanism speak words of good cheer ? 

Men see in their own work hardships and 
trials, while they recognize no hardships or 
trials in anybody else's occupation. Every 
man's burden is the heaviest, and every wo- 
man's task is the hardest. We find people 
wanting to get other occupations and profes- 
sions. I suppose, when the merchant comes 
home at night, his brain hot with the anxieties 
of commercial toil, disappointed and vexed, 
agitated about the excitements in the money 
markets, he says, " Oh, I wish I were a me- 
chanic ! When his day's work is done, the 
mechanic lies down ; he is healthy in body, 
healthy in mind, and healthy in soul, but I 
can't sleep ;" while, at that very moment, the 
mechanic is wishing he was a banker or a mer- 
chant. He says, "Then I could always have 
on beautiful apparel ; then I could move in 
the choicest circles ; then I could bring up my 
children in a very different sphere from that 
in which I am compelled to bring them up." 
Now, the beauty of our holy religion is that 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 47 

GOD LOOKS DOWN UPON ALL 

the occupations and professions, and while I 
cannot understand your annoyances and you 
cannot understand mine, God understands 
them all. He knows all about the troubles 
of these men mentioned in my text — the car- 
penter who encouraged the goldsmith, and he 
that smootheth with the hammer, and the 
gold-beaters. 

I will speak this morning of the general 
hardships of the working-classes. You may 
not belong to this class, but you are bound as 
Christian men and women to know their sor- 
rows and sympathize with them, and as politi- 
cal economists to come to their rescue. There 
is great danger that the prosperous classes, 
because of the bad things that have been said 
by the false friends of labor, shall conclude 
that all this labor trouble is a " hullabaloo'' 
about nothing. Do not go off on that tan- 
gent. You would not, neither would I, sub- 
mit without protest to the oppressions to 
which many of our laborers are subjected. 

ANARCHISTS REPUDIATED. 

You do a great wrong to the laboring classes 
if you hold them responsible for the work of 



48 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

the scoundrelly Anarchists. You cannot hate 
their deeds more thoroughly than do all the 
industrial classes. At the head of the chief 
organ of the Knights of Labor, in big letters, 
I find the following vigorous disclaimer : 

" Let it be understood by all the world that 
the Knights of Labor have no affiliation, asso- 
ciation, sympathy or respect for the band of 
cowardly murderers, cut-throats, and robbers, 
known as Anarchists, who sneak through the 
country like midnight assassins, stirring up the 
passions of ignorant foreigners, unfurling the 
red flag of anarchy and causing riot and blood- 
shed. Parsons, Spies, Fielding, Most, and all 
their followers, sympathizers, aiders, and abet- 
tors, should be summarily dealt with. They 
are entitled to no more consideration than wild 
beasts. The leaders are cowards and their fol- 
lowers are fools." 

You may do your duty toward your em- 
ployes, but many do not, and the biggest 
business firm in America to-day is Grip, 
Gouge, 

GRIND AND COMPANY. 

Look, for instance, at the woes of the wo- 
manly toilers, who have not made any strike and 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 49 

who are dying by the thousands, and dying 
by inches. I read a few lines from the last 
Labor Report, just out, as specimens of 
what female employes endure : " Poisoned 
hands and cannot work. Had to sue the 
man for fifty cents !" Another: "About 
four months of the year can, by hard work, 
earn a little more than three dollars per week'' 
Another : " She now makes wrappers at one 
dollar per dozen ; can make eight wrappers per 
day." Another: "We girls in our establish- 
ment have the following fines imposed : for 
washing your hands, twenty-five cents ; eating 
a piece of bread at your loom, one dollar ; also 
sitting on a stool, taking a drink of water, and 
many trifling things too numerous to men- 
tion." " Some of the worst villains of our cities 
are the employers of these women. They beat 
them down to the last penny, and try to cheat 
them out of that. The woman must deposit a 
dollar or two before she gets the garments to 
work on. When the work is done it is sharply 
inspected, the most insignificant flaw is picked 
out, and the wages refused and sometimes the 
dollar deposited not given back. The Wo- 
man's Protective Union reports a case where 
one of the poor souls, finding a place where 



50 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

she could get more wages, resolved to change 
employers, and went to get her pay for work 
done. The employer says, ' I hear you are go- 
ing to leave me ?' ' Yes/ she said, 'and I have 
come to get what you owe me,' He made no 
answer. She said : i Are you not going to pay 
me?' 'Yes/ he said, 'I will pay you/ and he 
kicked her down stairs." I never swore a word 
in all my life, but I confess that when I read 
that I felt a stirring within me that was not at 
all devotional. 

UNDERPAID WOMEN. 

By what principle of justice is it that wo- 
men in many of our cities get only two thirds 
as much as men, and in many cases only half ? 
Here is the gigantic injustice, that for work 
equally well, if not better done, woman re- 
ceives far less compensation than man. Start 
with the National Government. Women 
clerks in Washington get nine hundred dollars 
for doing that for which men receive eighteen 
hundred dollars. The wheel of oppression is 
rolling over the necks of thousands of women 
who are at this moment in despair about what 
they are to do. Many of the largest mercan- 
tile establishments of our cities are accessory 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 5 1 

to these abominations, and from their large 
establishments there are scores of souls being 
pitched off into death, and their employers 
know it. Is there a God ? Will there be a 
judgment ? I tell you, if God rises up to re- 
dress woman's wrongs, many of our large estab- 
lisments will be swallowed up quicker than a 
South American earthquake ever took down a 
city. God will catch these oppressors between 
the mill-stones of His wrath, and grind them 
to powder. 

Why is it that a female principal in a 
school gets only eight hundred and twenty-five 
dollars for doing work for which a male princi- 
pal gets sixteen hundred and fifty dollars ? I 
hear from all this land the wail of womanhood. 
Man has nothing to answer to that wail but 
flatteries. He says she is an angel. She is 
not. She knows she is not. She is a human 
being who gets hungry when she has no food, 
and cold when she has no fire. Give her no 
more flatteries ; give her justice ! There are 
sixty-five thousand sewing-girls in New York 
and Brooklyn. Across the sunlight comes 
their death groan. It is not such a cry as 
comes from those who are suddenly hurled out 
of life, but a slow, grinding, horrible wasting 



52 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

away. At a large meeting of these women 
held in a hall in Philadelphia, grand speeches 
were delivered, but a needlewoman took the 
stand, threw aside her faded shawl, and with 
her shrivelled arm hurled a very thunderbolt 
of eloquence, speaking out the horrors of her 
own experience. Stand at the corner of a 
street at six or seven o'clock in the morning, 
as the women go to work. Many of them 
had no breakfast except the crumbs that were 
left over from the night before, or the crumbs 
they chew on their way through the street. 
Here they come ! 

THE WORKING-GIRLS OF NEW YORK 

and Brooklyn. These engaged in head work, 
these in flower-making, in millinery, paper-box 
making ; but, most overworked of all and least 
compensated, the sewing-women. Why do 
they not take the city cars on their way up ? 
They cannot afford the five cents. If, conclud- 
ing to deny herself something else, she gets 
into the car, give her a seat. You want to see 
how Latimer and Ridley appeared in the fire. 
Look at that woman and behold a more horri- 
ble martyrdom, a hotter fire, a more agonizing 
death. Ask that woman how much she gets 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 53 

for her work, and she will tell you six cents for 
making coarse shirts and finds her own thread. 
I speak more fitly of woman's wrongs be- 
cause she has not been heard in the present 
agitation. You know more of what men have 
suffered. I said to a colored man who, in 
Missouri, last March, came into my room in 
the morning to build my fire : " Sam, how 
much wages do you people get around here ?" 
He replied: " Ten dollars a month, sir !" I 
asked : " Have you a family ?" " Yes," said he, 
''wife and children." Think of it — a hundred 
and twenty dollars a year to support a family 
on ! My friends, there is in this world 

SOMETHING AWFULLY ATWIST. 

When I think of these things, I am not bothered 
as some of my brethren with the abstract ques- 
tions as to why God let sin come into the 
world. The only wonder with me is that God 
don't smash this world up and start another in 
place of it. 

One great trial that the working-classes feel 
is 

PHYSICAL EXHAUSTION. 

There are athletes who go out to their work at 
six or seven o'clock in the morning, and come 



54 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

back at night as fresh as when they started. 
They turn their back upon the shuttle or the 
forge or the rising wall, and they come away 
elastic and whistling. That is the exception. 
I have noticed that when the factory bell taps 
for six o'clock, the hard-working man wearily 
puts his arm into his coat-sleeve and starts for 
home. He sits down in the family circle, re- 
solved to make himself agreeable, to be the 
means of culture and education to his children, 
but in five minutes he is sound asleep. He is 
fagged out — strength of body, mind, and soul 
utterly exhausted. He rises in the morning 
only half rested from the toil. Indeed, he will 
never have any perfect rest in this world until 
he gets into one narrow spot which is the only 
perfect rest for the human body in this world. 
I think they call it a grave ! 

Has toil frosted the color of your cheeks? 
Has it taken all spontaneity from your laugh- 
ter? Has it subtracted the spring from your 
step and the lustre from your eye until it has 
left you only half the man you were when you 
first put your hand on the hammer and your 
foot on the wheel ? To-morrow, in your place 
of toil, listen, and you will hear a voice above 
the hiss of the furnace and the groan of the 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 55 

1 

foundry and the clatter of the shuttle-— a voice 
not of machinery, nor of the task-master, but 
the voice of an all-sympathetic God, as He 
says, "Come unto Me, all you who labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Let 
all men and women of toil remember that this 
work will soon be over. Have they not heard 
that there is a great holiday coming ? Oh, 
that home, and no long walk to get to it ! Oh, 
that bread, and no sweating toil necessary to 
earn it ! Oh, these deep wells of eternal rap- 
ture, and no heavy buckets to draw up ! I 
wish they would put their head on this pillow 
stuffed with the down from the wing of all 
God's promises: "There remaineth a rest for 
the people of God." 

Do you say, " We have sewing-machines 
now in our great cities, and the trouble is 
gone ?" No ; it is not. I see a great many 
women wearing themselves out amid the hard- 
ships of the sewing-machine. A Christian man 
went into a house of a good deal of destitution 
in New York, and he saw a poor woman there 
with a sick child, and he was telling the woman 
how good a Christian she ought to be, and how 
she ought to put her trust in God. " Oh," she 
said, " I have no God ; I work from Monday 



56 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

morning until Saturday night and I get no 
rest, and I never hear anything that does my 
soul any good ; and when Sunday comes, I 
haven't aiay bonnet that I can wear to church, 
and I have sometimes got down to pray and 
then I got up, saying to my husband, ' My 
dear, there's no use of my praying; I am so 
distracted I can't pray ; it don't do any good ! ' 
Oh, sir, it is very hard to work on as we peo- 
ple do from year to year, and to see nothing 
bright ahead, and to see the poor little child 
getting thinner and thinner, and my man al- 
most broken down, and to be getting no nearer 
to God, but to be getting farther away from 
him ! Oh, if I were only ready to die !" May 
God comfort all who toil with the needle and 
the sewing-machine, and have compassion on 
those borne down under the fatigues of life. 
Another great trial is 

PRIVATION OF TASTE 

and sentiment. I do not know of anything 
much more painful than to have a fine taste for 
painting and sculpture and music and glorious 
sunsets and the expanse of the blue sky, and 
yet not to be able to get the dollar for the ora- 
torio, or to get a picture, or to buy one's way 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 57 

into the country to look at the setting sun and 
at the bright heavens. While there are men in 
great affluence, who have around them all kinds 
of luxuries in art, themselves entirely unable to 
appreciate these luxuries — buying their books 
by the square foot, their pictures sent to them 
by some artist who is glad to get the miserable 
daubs out of the studio — there are multitudes 
of refined, delicate women, who are born art- 
ists, and shall reign in the kingdom of heaven 
as artists, who are denied every picture and 
every sweet song and every musical instrument. 
Oh, let me cheer such persons by telling them 
to look up and behold the inheritance that God 
has reserved for them ! 

A HEART-BREAKING PICTURE. 

Then there are a great many who suffer not 
only in the privation of their taste, but in the 
apprehensions and the oppressive surroundings 
of life that were well described by an English 
writer. He said : " To be a poor man's child, 
and look through the rails of the playground, 
and envy richer boys for the sake of their many 
books, and yet to be doomed to ignorance. To 
be apprenticed to some harsh stranger, and feel 
forever banished from a mother's tenderness 



58 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

and a sister's love. To work when very weary, 
and work when the heart is sick and the head 
is sore. To see a wife or a darling child wast- 
ing away, and not to be able to get the best 
advice. To think that the better food or purer 
air might set her up again, but that food you 
cannot buy, that air you must never hope to 
breathe. To be obliged to let her die. To 
come home from the daily task some evening, 
and see her sinking. To sit up all night in 
hope to catch again those precious words you 
might have heard could you have afforded to 
stay at home all day, but never hear them. To 
have no mourners at the funeral, and even to 
have to carry on your own shoulder through 
the merry streets the light deal coffin. To see 
huddled into a promiscuous hole the dust which 
is so dear to you, and not venture to mark the 
spot by planted flower or lowliest stone." 

But I have no time this morning longer to 
dwell upon the hardships and the trials of those 
who toil with hand and foot, for I must go on 
to offer some grand and 

GLORIOUS ENCOURAGEMENTS 

for such ; and the first encouragement is, that 
one of the greatest safeguards against evil is 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 59 

plenty to do. When men sin against the law 
of their country, where do the police detectives 
go to find them ? Not amid the dust of fac- 
tories, not among those who have on their 
" overalls,'' but among those who stand with 
their hands in their pockets around the doors 
of saloons and restaurants and taverns. Active 
employment is one of the greatest sureties for 
a pure and upright life. There are but very 
few men with character stalwart enough to en- 
dure consecutive idleness. 

I see a pool' of water in the country, and I 
say, "Thou slimy, fetid thing, what does all 
this mean ? Didn't I see you playing with 
those shuttles and turning that grist-mill ?" 
"Oh, yes," says the water, " I used to earn my 
living." I say again, " Then what makes you 
look so sick ? Why are you covered with this 
green scum ? Why is your breath so vile ?" 
"Oh," says the water, " I have nothing to do. 
I am disgusted with shuttles and wheels. I am 
going to spend my whole lifetime here, and 
while yonder stream sings on its way down the 
mountain side, here I am left to fester and die 
accursed of God because I have nothing to 
do !" Sin is 



6o THE BATTLE FOR BREAD, 



AN OLD PIRATE 

that bears down on vessels whose sails are flap- 
ping idly in the wind. The arrow of sin has 
hard work to puncture the leather of an old 
working-apron. Be encouraged by the fact 
that your shops, your rising walls, your anvils 
are fortresses in which you may hide, and from 
which you may fight against the temptations of 
your life. Morning, noon, and night, Sundays 
and week-days, thank God for plenty to do. 

Another encouragement is the fact that their 
families are going to have the very best oppor- 
tunity for development and usefulness. That 
may sound strange to you, but 

THE CHILDREN OF FORTUNE 

are very apt to turn out poorly. In nine cases 
out of ten the lad finds out if a fortune is com- 
ing, by twelve years of age ; he finds out there 
is no necessity of toil, and he makes no struggle, 
and a life without struggle goes into dissipation 
or stupidity. You see the sons of wealthy pa- 
rents going out into the world, inane, nerveless, 
dyspeptic, or they are incorrigible and reckless, 
while the son of the porter that kept the gate 
learns his trade, gets a robust physical consti- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 6l 

tution, achieves high moral culture, and stands 
in the front rank of Church and State. 

Who are the men mightiest in our Legisla- 
tures and Congress and Cabinets ? Did they 
walk up the steep of life in silver slippers ? Oh, 
no. The mother put him down under the tree 
in the shade, while she spread the hay. Many 
of these mighty men ate out of an iron spoon 
and drank out of the roughest earthenware — 
their whole life a forced march. They never 
had any luxuries until, after awhile, God gave 
them affluence and usefulness and renown as a 
reward for their persistence. Remember, then, 
that though you may have poor surroundings 
and small means for the education of your chil- 
dren, they are actually starting under better 
advantages than though you had a fortune to 
give them. Hardship and privation are not a 
damage to them, but an advantage. Akenside 
rose to his eminent sphere from his fathers 
butcher-shop. Robert Burns started as a shep- 
herd. Prideau used to sweep Exeter College. 
Gifford was a shoemaker, and the son of every 
man of toil may rise to heights of intellectual 
and moral power if he will only trust God and 
keep busy. 

Again, I offer as encouragement that you 



62 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

V 
have so many opportunities of gaining infor- 
mation. Plato gave thirteen hundred dollars 
for two books. The Countess of Anjou gave 
two hundred sheep for one volume. Jerome 
ruined himself financially by buying one copy 
of Origen. Oh, the contrast ! Now there are 
tens of thousands of pens gathering up infor- 
mation. Typesetters are calling for "copy." 
All our cities quake with the rolling cylinders 
of the Harpers and the Appletons and the Lip- 
pincotts and the Petersons and the Ticknors, 
and you now buy more than Benjamin Frank- 
lin ever knew for fifty cents ! There are peo- 
ple who toil from seven o'clock in the morning 
until six o'clock at night who know more about 
anatomy than the old physiologists, and who 
know more cbout astronomy than the old phi- 
losophers. If you should take the learned men 
of two hundred years ago and put them on one 
bench, and take twenty children from the com- 
mon schools in Brooklyn and put them down 
on the other bench, the children could examine 
the philosophers, and the philosophers could 
not examine the children. "Ah!" says Isaac 
Newton, coming up and talking to some intel- 
ligent lad of seven years, " What is that ?" " Oh, 
that is a rail-train !" " What is that ?" " That 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 63 

is a telegraph." "What, is that?" " It is a 
telephone." " Dear me ! I think I shall go 
back to my bed in the dust, for I am bewil- 
dered and my head turns." Oh, rejoice that 
you have all these opportunities of information 
spread out before you, and that, seated in your 
chair at home, by the evening light, you can 
look over all nations and see the ascending 
morn of a universal day. 

TOIL A DISCIPLINE. 

One more encouragement : Your toils in this 
world are only intended to be a discipline by 
which you shall be prepared for heaven. " Be- 
hold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy," 
and tell you that Christ, the carpenter of Naz- 
areth, is the workingman's Christ. You get 
His love once in your heart, O workingman ! 
and you can sing on the wall in the midst of 
the storm, and in the shop amid the shoving of 
the plane, and down in the mine amid the 
plunge of the crowbar, and on shipboard while 
climbing ratlines. If you belong to the Lord 
Jesus Christ, He will count the drops of sweat 
on your brow. He knows every ache and every 
pain you have ever suffered in your worldly 
occupation. Are you weary ? He will give 



64 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

you rest. Are you sick ? He will give you 
health. Are you cold ? He will wrap around 
you the warm mantle of His eternal love. 

And besides that, my friends, you must re- 
member, that all this is 

ONLY PREPARATORY 

a prefatory and introductory. I see a great 
multitude before the throne of God. Who are 
they? "Oh," you say, "those are princes; 
they must have always been in a royal family ; 
they dress like princes, they walk like princes, 
they are princes ; there are none of the com- 
mon people there ; none of the people that 
ever toiled with hand and foot !" Ah ! you are 
mistaken. Who is that bright spirit before the 
throne ? Why, that was a sewing-girl who, 
work as she could, could make but two shil- 
lings the day. What are those kings and 
queens before the throne ? Many of them 
went up from Birmingham mills and from 
Lowell carpet factories. 

THE SONG OF THE REDEEMED. 

And now I hear a sound like the rustling of 
robes, and now I see a taking up of harps as 
though they were going to strike a thanksgiving 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 65 

anthem, and all the children of the saw, and the 
disciples of the shuttle are in glorious array, 
and they lift a song so clear and sweet I wish 
you could hear it. It would make the pilgrim's 
burden very light, and the pilgrim's journey 
very short. Not one weak voice or hoarse 
throat in that great assemblage. The accord 
is as perfect as though they had been all eter- 
nity practising, and I ask them what is the 
name of that song they sing before the throne, 
and they tell me it is the song of the redeemed 
working-people. And the angel cries out : 
11 Who are these so near the throne ?" and the 
answer comes back : "These are they who 
came out of great tribulation, and had their 
robes washed and made white in the blood of 
the Lamb." 



66 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 



MONOPOLY AND COMMUNISM. 

"Thy land shall be married. " — Isa. 62:4. 

As the greater includes the less, so does the 
circle of future joy around our entire world in- 
clude the epicycle of our own republic. Bold, 
exhilarant, unique, divine imagery of the text ! 
So many are depressed by the labor agitation, 
and think everything in this country is going to 
pieces, I preach this morning a sermon of good 
cheer, and anticipate the time when the Prince 
of Peace and the Heir of Universal Dominion 
shall take possession of this nation and " Thy 
land shall be married." 

In discussing the final destiny of this nation, 
it makes all the difference in the world whether 
we are on the way to a funeral or a wedding. 
The Bible leaves no doubt on this subject. In 
pulpits, and on platforms, and in places of pub- 
lic concourse I hear so many of the muffled 
drums of evil prophecy sounded, as though we 
were on the way to national interment, and be- 
side Thebes, and Babylon, and Tyre in the cem- 
etery of dead nations our republic was to be en- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 67 

tombed, that I wish you to understand it is not 
to be obsequies, but nuptials ; not mausoleum, 
but carpeted altar ; not cypress, but orange 
blossoms ; not requiem, but wedding march, for 
"Thy land shall be married." I propose to 
name some of 

THE SUITORS 

who are claiming the hand of this republic. 
This land is so fair, so beautiful, so affluent, that 
it has many suitors, and it will depend much 
upon your advice whether this or that shall be 
accepted or rejected. 

I. In the first place, I remark: There is a 
greedy, all-grasping monster who comes in as 
suitor seeking the hand of this republic, and 
that monster is known by the name of 

MONOPOLY. 

His sceptre is made out of the iron of the rail- 
track and the wire of telegraphy. He does 
everything for his own advantage and for the 
robbery of the people. Things have gone on 
from bad to worse, until in the three Legislatures 
of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyvania, 
for the most part, monopoly decides everything. 
If monopoly favor a law, it passes. If monopoly 



68 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

oppose a law, it is rejected. Monopoly stands 
in this railroad depot, putting into his pockets 
in one year two hundred millions of dollars in 
excess of all reasonable charges for service. 
Monopoly holds in his one hand the steam- 
power of locomotives, and in the other the 
electricity of swift communication. Monopoly 
decides nominations and elections — city elec- 
tions, State elections, national elections. With 
bribes he secures the votes of legislators — giv- 
ing them free passes, giving appointments to 
needy relatives to lucrative positions, employ- 
ing them as attorneys, if they are lawyers ; carry- 
ing their goods fifteen per cent less if they are 
merchants ; and if he finds a case very stubborn, 
as well as very important, puts down before him 
the hard cash of bribery. 

But Monopoly is not so easily caught now as 
when, during the term of Mr. Buchanan, in one 
of our States a certain railway compay procured 
a donation of public land. It was found out that 
thirteen of the Senators of that State received 
one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars 
among them ; sixty members of the Lower 
House of that State received five thousand and 
ten thousand dollars each ; the Governor of the 
State received fifty thousand dollars; his clerk 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 69 

received five thousand dollars ; the Lieutenant- 
Governor received ten thousand dollars ; all the 
clerks of the Legislature received five thousand 
dollars each, while fifty thousand dollars were 
divided amid the lobby agents. 

That thing on a larger or smaller scale, is all 
the time going on in some of the States of the 
Union, but it is not so blundering as it used to 
be, and therefore not as easily exposed or ar- 
rested. I tell you that 

THE SHADOWING CURSE 

of the United States to-day is monopoly. He 
puts his hand upon every bushel of wheat ; upon 
every sack of salt ; upon every ton of coal ; and 
every man, woman, and child in the United 
States feels the touch of that moneyed despot- 
ism. I rejoice that in twenty-four States of the 
Union already anti-monopoly leagues have been 
established, God speed them in their work of 
liberation! I wish that this question might be 
the qeestion of our Presidential elections, and 
that we compel the political parties to recognize 
it on their platforms. 

I have nothing to say against capitalists. A 
man has a right to all the money he can make 
honestly. There is not a laborer in the land 



/O THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

that would not be worth a million dollars if he 
could. I have nothing to say against corpora- 
tions as such — without them no great enterprise 
would be possible ; but what I do say is that the 
same principles are to be applied to capitalists 
and to corporations that are applied to the poor- 
est man and the plainest laborer. What is 
wrong for me is wrong for great corporations. 
If I take from you your property without ade- 
quate compensation I am a thief, and if a rail- 
way damage the property of the people without 
any adequate compensation that is a gigantic 
theft. What is wrong on a small scale is wrong 
on a large scale. Monopoly in England has 
ground hundreds and thousands of her best 
people into semi-starvation, and in Ireland has 
driven multitudinous tenants almost to madness. 

EUROPEAN LAND SHARKS. 

Five hundred acres in this country make an 
immense farm. When you read that in Dakota 
Territory Mr. Cass has a farm of 15,000 acres, 
and Mr. Grandon, 25,000 acres, and Mr. Dal- 
rymple, 40,000 acres, your eyes dilate, even 
though these farms are in great regions thinly 
inhabited. But what do you think of this which 
I take from the Doomsday Book, showing what 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 7 1 

monopoly is on the other side the sea ? I give 
it as a warning of what it would do on this side 
the sea, if in some lawful way the tendency is 
not resisted. In Scotland, J. G. M. Heddle 
owns 50,400 acres; Earl of Wemyss, 52,000 
acres ; Duke of Montrose, 68,000 acres ; Cam- 
eron of Lochiel, 109,500 acres ; Sir C. W.Ross, 
1 10,400 acres ; Earl of Fife, 1 13,000 acres ; the 
Mackintosh, 124,000 acres ; Lord MacDonald, 
130,000 acres ; Earl of Dalhousie, 136,000 acres ; 
Macleodof Macleod, 141,700 acres ; Sir K.Mac- 
kenzie, of Gairlock, 164,680 acres; Duke of 
Argyle, 1 75,000 acres ; Duke of Hamilton, 183- 
000 acres ; Duke of Athole, 194,000 acres ; Duke 
of Richmond, 255,000 acres ; Earl of Stair, 270- 
000 acres ; Mr. Evan Baillie, 300,000 acres ; Earl 
of Seafield, 306,000 acres ; Duke of Buccleugh, 
432,183 acres; Earl of Breadalbane, 437,696 
acres; Mr. A. Matheson, 220,433 a cres ; and Sir 
J. Matheson, 406,070 acres ; Duchess of Suther- 
land, 149,879 acres; and Duke of Sutherland, 
1,176,343 acres. 

THE RESULT. 

Such monpolies imply an infinite acreage of 
wretchedness. There is no poverty in the 
United States like that in England, Ireland, and 



*]2 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Scotland, for the simple reason that in those 
lands monopoly has had longer and larger sway. 
Last summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, after 
preaching in Synod Hall, I preached in the Grass 
Market and to the wretched inhabitants of the 
Cowgate and the Canongate, the audience ex- 
hibiting the squalor, and sickliness, and despair 
that remains in one's mind like one of the 
visions of Dante's Inferno. 

Great monopolies in any land imply great pri- 
vation. The time will come when our Govern- 
ment will have to limit the amount of accumula- 
tion of property. Unconstitutional, do you say ? 
Then constitutions will have to be changed un- 
til they allow such limitation. Otherwise the 
work of absorption will go on, and the large 
fishes will eat up the small fishes, and the shad 
will swallow up the minnows, and the porpoise 
swallow the shad, and the whales swallow the 
porpoises, and a thousand greedy men will own 
all the world. 

But would a law of limitation of wealth be 
unrighteous? If I dig so near my neighbors 
foundations, in order to build my house, that I 
endanger his, the law grabs me. If I have a 
tannery or a chemical factory, the malodors of 
which injure residents in the neighborhood, the 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 73 

law says: " Stop that !" If I drain off a river 
from its bed, and divert it to turn my mill 
wheel, leaving the bed of the river a breeding 
place for malaria, the laws says 

"QUIT THAT OUTRAGE^ 

And has not a good Government a right to say 
that a few men shall not gorge themselves on 
the comfort, and health, and life of generations ? 
Your rights end where my rights begin. 

Monopoly, brazen-faced, and iron-fingered, 
vulture-hearted monopoly, offers his hand to this 
republic. He stretches it out over the lakes, 
and up the Pennsylvania, and the Erie, and the 
New York Central railroads, and over the tele- 
graph poles of the continent, and says : " Here 
is my heart and hand ; be mine forever." Let 
the millions of the people, North, South, East, 
and West, forbid the banns of that marriage — 
forbid them at the ballot-box, forbid them on 
the platform, forbid them by great organiza- 
tions, forbid them by the overwhelming senti- 
ments of an outraged nation, forbid them by the 
protest of the Church of God, forbid them by 
prayer to high heaven. That Herod shall not 
have this Abigail. It shall not be to all devour- 
ing monopoly that this land is to be married. 



74 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

II. Another suitor claiming the hand of this 
republic is 

NIHILISM. 

He owns nothing but a knife for universal 
blood-letting and a nitro-glycerine bomb for 
universal explosion, He believes in no God, 
no government, no heaven, and no hell, except 
what he can make on earth. He slew the Czar 
of Russia, keeps Emperor William, of Germany, 
practically imprisoned, killed Abraham Lincoln, 
would put to death every king and president on 
earth, and if he had the power would climb up 
until he could drive the God of Heaven from 
His throne and take it himself — the universal 
butcher. In France it is called communism ; 
in the United States it is called Socialism ; in 
Russia it is called Nihilism. That last is the 
most graphic and descriptive term. It means 
complete and eternal smash-up. 

Where does this monster live ? In St. Louis, 
in Chicago, in Brooklyn, in New York, and in 
all the villages and cities of this land. The 
devil of destruction is an old devil, and he is to 
be seen at every great fire where there is any- 
thing to steal, and at every shipwreck where 
there is anything valuable floating ashore, and 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 75 

at every railroad accident where there are over- 
coats and watches to be purloined. On a small 
scale I saw it in my college days, when, in our 
literary society in New York University, we had 
an exquisite and costly bust of Shakespeare, 
and one morning we found a hole bored into 
the lips of the marble and a cigar inserted. 
There has not for the last century been a fine 
picture in your art gallery, or a graceful statue 
in your parks, or a fine frescoe on your wall, or 
a richly bound volume in your library, but 
would have been despoiled if the hand of ruf- 
fianism could have got at it without peril of in- 
carceration. 

The philosophy of the whole business is, that 
there is a large number of people who either 
through their laziness or their crime own noth- 
ing, and are mad at those who through industry 
and wit of their own, or of their ancestors, are 
in possession. of large resources. The honest 
laboring-classes never had anything to do with 
such murderous enterprises. It is the villain- 
ous classes who would not work if they had 
plenty of work offered them at large wages. 
Many of these suppose that by the demolition 
of law and order they would be advantaged, 
and the parting of the ship of State would allow 



j6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

them as wreckers to carry off the cargo. It 
offers its hand to this fair republic. It proposes 
to tear to pieces the ballot-box, the legislative 
hall, the Congressional assembly. It would 
take this land and divide it up, or rather 

DIVIDE IT DOWN. 

It would give as much to the idler as to the 
worker, to the bad as to the good. Nihilism ! 
This panther, having prowled across other lands, 
has set its paws on our soil, and it is only wait- 
ing for the time in which to spring upon its 
prey. It was Nihilism that massacred the he- 
roic policemen of Chicago and St. Louis a few 
days ago and that burned the railroad property 
at Pittsburgh during the great riots ; it was 
Nihilism that slew black people in our North- 
ern cities during the war ; it was Nihilism that 
again and again in San Francisco and in New 
York mauled to death the Chinese; it is Nihil- 
ism that glares out of the windows of the 
drunkeries upon sober people as they go by. 
Ah ! its power has never yet been tested. It 
would, if it had the power, leave every church, 
chapel, cathedral, schoolhouse, college, and 
home in ashes. 
Let me say, it is 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 77 

THE WORST ENEMY 

of the laboring-classes in any country. The 
honest cry for reform lifted by oppressed labor- 
ing men is drowned out by the vociferations 
for anarchy. The criminals and the vagabonds 
who range through our cities talking about their 
rights, when their first right is the penitentiary 
— if they could be hushed up, and the down- 
trodden laboring men of this country could be 
heard, there would be more bread for hungry 
children. Let not our oppressed laboring men 
be beguiled to coming under the bloody banner 
of Nihilism. It will make your taxes heavier, 
your wages smaller, your table scantier, your 
children hungrier, your suffering greater. 

Yet this Nihilism, with feet red of slaughter, 
comes forth and offers its hand for the republic. 
Shall the banns be proclaimed ? If so, where 
shall the marriage altar be ? and who will be the 
officiating priest ? And what will be the music ? 
That altar will have to be white with bleached 
skulls, the officiating priest must be a dripping 
assassin, the music must be the smothered groan 
of multitudinous victims, the garlands must be 
twisted of nightshade, the fruit must be apples 
of Sodom, the wine must be the blood of St. 



7 8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Bartholomew's massacre. No ! It is not to 
Nihilism, the sanguinital monster, that this land 
is to be married. 

III. Another suitor for the hand of this na- 
tion is 

INFIDELITY. 

Mark you that all anarchists are infidels. Not 
one of them believes in the Bible, and very 
rarely any of them believe in a God. Their 
most conspicuous leader was the other day 
pulled by the leg from under a bed in a house 
of infamy, cursing and blaspheming. The po- 
lice of Chicago, exploring the dens of the an- 
archists, found dynamite, and vitriol, and Tom 
Paine's "Age of Reason," and obscene pictures, 
and complimentary biographies of thugs and 
assassins, but not one Testament, not one of 
Wesley's hymn-books, not one Roman Catholic 
breviary. There are two wings to infidelity : 
the one calls itself Liberalism, and appears in 
highly literary magazines, and is for the edu- 
cated and refined ; the other wing is in the form 
of Anarchy, and is for the vulgar. But both 
wings belong to the same old filthy vulture — 
infidelity ! Elegant infidelity proposes to con- 
quer this land to itself by the pen ; Anarchy 
proposes to conquer it by bludgeon and torch. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 79 

When the midnight ruffians despoiled the 
grave of A. T. Stewart, in St. Mark's church- 
yard, everybody was shocked ; but infidelity 
proposes something worse than that — the rob- 
bing of all the graves of Christendom of the 
hope of a resurrection. It proposes to chisel 
out from the tombstones of your Christian 
dead the words, "Asleep in Jesus," and to sub- 
stitute the words, "Obliteration — annihilation/' 
Infidelity proposes to take away from this 
country the book that makes the difference be- 
tween the United States and the United King- 
dom of Dahomey, between American civiliza- 
tion and Bornesian cannibalism. 

The only impulse in the right direction that 
this world has ever had has come from the Bible. 
It was the mother of Roman law and of 
healthful jurisprudence. That book has been 
the mother of all reforms and all charities — 
mother of English Magna Charta and Ameri- 
can Declaration of Independence. I tell you 
that 

THE WORST ATTEMPTED CRIME 

of the century is the attempt to destroy this 
book ; yet infidelity, loathsome, stenchful, lep- 
rous, pestiferous, rotten monster, stretches out 



80 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

its hand, ichorous with the second death, to 
take the hand of this republic. 

And this suitor presses his case appallingly. 
Shall the banns of that marriage be proclaimed ? 
" No !" say the home missionaries of the West 
— a martyr band, of whom the world is not 
worthy, toiling amid fatigues, and malaria, and 
starvation. " No ! not if we can help it. By 
what we and our children have suffered we for- 
bid the banns of that marriage !" " No !" say 
all patriotic voices; "our institutions were 
bought at too dear a price, and were defended 
at too great a sacrifice, to be so cheaply surren- 
dered/' " No !" says the God of Bunker Hill, 
and Independence Hall, and Gettysburg ; " I 
did not start this nation for such a farce." 
"No," cry ten thousand voices; "to infidelity 
this land shall not be married !" 

IV. But there is 

ANOTHER SUITOR 

that presents his hand for the hand of this re- 
public. He is mentioned in the verse following 
my text, where it says: "As the bridegroom 
rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God re- 
joice over thee." It is not my figure, it is the 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 8 1 

figure of the Bible. As often princesses at their 
birth are 

PLEDGED IN TREATY 

of marriage to princes or kings of earth, so this 
nation at its birth was pledged to Christ for 
Divine marriage. Before Columbus and his 
hundred and twenty men embarked on the 
Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, for their 
wonderful voyage, what was the last thing they 
did ? They kneeled down and took the holy 
sacrament of the Lord Jesus Christ. After they 
caught the first glimpse of this country, and the 
gun of one ship had announced it to the other 
vessels that land had been discovered, what was 
the song that went up from all the three decks ? 
u Gloria in Excelsis." After Columbus and his 
hundred and twenty men had stepped from the 
ships' decks to the solid ground, what did they 
do ? They all knelt and consecrated the New 
World to God. 

What did the Huguenots do after they landed 
in the Carolinas ? What did the Holland ref- 
ugees do after they had landed in New York ? 
What did the Pilgrim Fathers do after they 
landed in New England ? With bended knee, 
and uplifted face, and heaven-besieging prayer 



82 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

they took possession of this country for God. 
How was the first American Congress opened ? 
By prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. From 
its birth this nation was pledged for holy mar- 
riage with Christ. 

And, then, see how good God has been to us ! 
Just open the map of the continent and see 
how it is shaped for immeasurable prosperities. 
Navigable rivers, more in number and greater 
than of any other land, rolling down on all 
sides into the sea, prophesying large manufac- 
tures and easy commerce. Look at the great 
ranges of mountains timbered with wealth on 
the top and sides, metalled with wealth under- 
neath. One hundred and eighty thousand 
square miles of coal, four hundred and eighty 
thousand square miles of iron. All fruits, all 
minerals, all harvests. Scenery displaying an 
autumnal pageantry that no land on earth pre- 
tends to rival. No South American earth- 
quakes. No Scotch mists. No London fogs. 
No Egyptian plagues. No Germanic divisions. 
The people of the United States are happier 
than any people on earth. It is the testimony 
of every man that has travelled abroad. For 
the poor, more sympathy ; for the industrious 
more opportunity. Oh, how good God was to 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 83 

our fathers, and how good He has been to us 
and our children ! 

We have during the past six or seven years 

TURNED A NEW LEAF 

in our national history by the sudden addition 
of millions of foreigners. At Kansas City I 
was told by a gentleman who had opportunity 
for large investigation, that a great multitude 
had gone through there, averaging in worldly 
estate eight hundred dollars. I was told in the 
city of Washington by an officer of the Gov- 
ernment, who had opportunity for authentic 
investigation, that thousands and thousands had 
gone, averaging one thousand dollars in pos- 
session each. I was told by the Commissioner 
of Emigration that twenty families that had ar- 
rived at Castle Garden brought eighty-five thou- 
sand dollars with them. Mark you, families, 
not tramps — additions to the national wealth, 
not subtractions therefrom. I saw some of 
them reading their Bibles and their hymn-books, 
thanking God for His kindness in helping 
them cross the sea. They will turn your Ter- 
ritories into States, and your wildernesses into 
gardens, if you will build for them churches, 



84 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

and establish for them schools, and send Chris- 
tian missionaries. 

Are you afraid this continent is going to be 
overcrowded with this population ? Ah ! that 
shows you have not been to Oregon, that shows 
that you have not been to Texas. A fishing- 
smack to-day on Lake Ontario might as well 
be afraid of being crowded by other shipping 
before night as for any one of the next ten gen- 
erations of Americans to be afraid of being- 
overcrowded by foreign populations in this 
country. The one State of Texas is far larger 
than all the Austrian Empire, yet the Austrian 
Empire supports thirty-five million people. The 
one State of Texas is larger than all France, 
and France supports thirty-six million people. 
The one State of Texas far surpasses in size the 
Germanic Empire, yet the Germanic Empire 
supports forty-one million people. I tell you 
the great want of the Territories and of the 
Western States is more population. 

While some may stand at the gates of the 
city, saying : " Stand back !" to foreign popula- 
tions, I press out as far beyond those gates as 
I can press out beyond them, and beckon to 
foreign nations, saying : "Come, come !" "But," 
say you, " I am so afraid that they will bring 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 85 

their prejudices for foreign Governments, and 
plant them here." Absurd. They are sick of 
the Governments that have oppressed them, 
and they want free America. Give them the 
great gospel of welcome. Throw around them 
all Christian hospitalities. They will add their 
industry and hard-earned wages to this country, 
and then we will dedicate all to Christ, " and 
thy land shall be married." 

THE SITE FOR THE NUPTIALS. 

But where shall the marriage altar be ? Let 
it be the Rocky Mountains, when through arti- 
ficial and mighty irrigation, all their tops shall 
be covered, as they will be, with vineyards, and 
orchards, and grain fields. Then let the Bos- 
tons, and the New Yorks, and the Charlestons 
of the Pacific Coast come to the marriage altar 
on the one side, and then let the Bostons, and 
the New Yorks, and the Charlestons of the 
Atlantic Coast come to the marriage altar on 
the other side, and there between them let this 
bride of nations kneel ; and then if the organ 
of the loudest thunders that ever shook the 
Sierra Nevadas on the one side, or moved the 
foundations of the Alleghanies on the other 
side, should open full diapason of wedding 



86 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

march, that organ of thunders could not drown 
the voice of Him who should take the hand of 
the bride of nations, saying : "As a bridegroom 
rejoiceth over a bride, so thy God rejoiceth 
over thee." "And so thy land shall be mar- 
ried." 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 87 



THE WORST FOE OF LABOR. 

" He that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it 
into a bag with holes." — Haggai i: 6. 

In Persia, under the reign of Darius Hystas- 
pes, the people did not prosper. They made 
money, but did not keep it. They were like peo- 
ple who have a sack in which they put money, 
not knowing that the sack is torn, or eaten of 
moths, or in some way made incapable of 
holding valuables. As fast as the coin was put 
in one end of the sack it dropped out of the 
other. It made no difference how much wages 
they got, for they lost them. " He that earneth 
wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with 
holes." 

WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE BILLIONS 

and billions of dollars in this country paid to 
the working classes ? Some of these moneys 
have gone for house rent, or the purchase of 
homesteads, or wardrobe, or family expenses, or 
the necessities of life, or to provide comforts in 
old age. What has become of other billions ? 



88 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Wasted in foolish outlay. Wasted at the gam- 
ing-table. Wasted in intoxicants. Put into a 
bag with a hundred holes. 

Gather up the money that the working classes 
have spent for rum during the last thirty years, 
and I will build for every workingman a house, 
and lay out for him a garden, and clothe his 
sons in broadcloth and his daughters in silks, 
and stand at his front door a prancing span of 
sorrels or bays, and secure him a policy of life- 
insurance, so that the present home may be 
well maintained after he is dead. The most 
persistent, most overpowering enemy of the 
working classes is intoxicating liquor. It is 
the anarchist of the centuries, and has boy- 
cotted and is now boycotting the body and 
mind and soul of American labor. It is to it 
a worse foe than monopoly, and worse than as- 
sociated capital. 

It annually swindles industry out of a large 
percentage of its earnings. It holds out its 
blasting solicitations to the mechanic or opera- 
tive on his way to work, and at the noon-spell, 
and on his way home at eventide ; on Saturday, 
when the wages are paid, it snatches a large part 
of the money that might come to the family, 
and sacrifices it among the saloon-keepers. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 89 

Within eight hundred yards of Sands Street 
Methodist Church, Brooklyn, it has fifty-four 
saloons, and is plotting now for another. Stand 
the saloons of this country side by side, and it is 
carefully estimated they would reach from New 
York to Chicago. Forward, march, says the 
rum power, and take possession of the American 
nation ! 

The rum business is pouring its vitriolic and 
damnable liquids down the throats of hundreds 
of thousands of laborers, and while the ordinary 
strikes are ruinous both to employers and em- 
ployees, 

I PROCLAIM A STRIKE 

universal against strong drink, which, if kept 
up, will be the relief of the working classes and 
the salvation of the nation. I will undertake 
to say that there is not a healthy laborer in the 
United States who, within the next ten years, 
if he will refuse all intoxicating beverage and 
be saving, may not become a capitalist on a 
small scale. Our country in a year spends one 
billion five hundred million and fifty thousand 
dollars for rum. Of course the working classes 
do a great deal of this expenditure. Careful 
statistics show that the wage-earning classes of 



90 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Great Britain expend in liquors one hundred 
million pounds, or five hundred million dollars 
a year. Sit down and think, O workingman ! 
how much you have expended in these direc- 
tions. Add it all up. Add up what your 
neighbors have expended, and realize that in- 
stead of answering the beck of other people you 
might have been your own capitalist. When 
you deplete a workingman's physical energy 
you deplete his capital. 

THE STIMULATED WORKMAN 

gives out before the unstimulated workman. 
My father said : " I became a temperance man 
in early life, because I noticed in the harvest- 
field that, though I was physically weaker than 
other workmen, I could hold out longer than 
they. They took stimulants, I took none." A 
brickmaker in England gives his experience in 
regard to this matter among men in his employ. 
He says, after investigation : "The beer-drinker 
who made the fewest bricks made six hundred 
and fifty nine thousand ; the abstainer who 
made the fewest bricks, seven hundred and 
forty-six thousand. The difference in behalf of 
the abstainer over the indulger, eighty-seven 
thousand." There came a very exhausting time 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 91 

in the British Parliament. The session was pro- 
longed until nearly all the members got sick or 
worn out. Out of six hundred and fifty-two 
members only two went through undamaged ; 
they were teetotalers. 

When an army goes out to the battle the 
soldier who has water or coffee in his canteen 
marches easier and fights better than the soldier 
who has whiskey in his canteen. Rum helps a 
man to fight when he has only one contestant, 
and that at the street corner. But when he goes 
forth to maintain some great battle for God and 
his country, he wants no rum about him. When 
the Russians go to war a corporal passes along 
the line and smells the breath of every soldier. 
If there be in his breath a taint of intoxicating 
liquor, the man is sent back to the barracks. 
Why ? He cannot endure fatigue. All our 
young men know this. When they are prepar- 
ing for a regatta, or for a ball club, or for an 
athletic wrestling, they abstain. Our working 
people will be wiser after a while, and the money 
they fling away on hurtful indulgences they will 
put into co-operative associations, and so become 
capitalists. If the vvorkingman put down his 
wages and then take his expenses and spread 
them out, so they will just equal, he is not wise. 



52 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

I know workingmen who are in a perfect fidget 
until they get rid of their last dollar. 

. A COSTLY SACQUE. 

The following circumstances came under our 
observation : A young man worked hard to earn 
his six or seven hundred dollars yearly. Mar- 
riage day came. The bride had inherited five 
hundred dollars from her grandfather. She 
spent every dollar of it on the wedding dress. 
Then they rented two rooms in a third story. 
Then the young man took extra evening em- 
ployment ; almost exhausted with the day's 
work, yet took evening employment. It almost 
extinguished his eyesight. Why did he add 
evening employment to the day employment ? 
To get money. Why did he want to get 
money ? To lay up something for a rainy day ? 
No. To get his life insured, so that in case of 
his death his wife would not be a beggar ? No. 
He put the extra evening work to the day work 
that he might get a hundred and fifty dollars to 
get his wife a sealskin coat. The sister of the 
bride heard of this achievement, and was not to 
be eclipsed. She was very poor, and she sat up 
w r orking nearly all the nights for a great while 
until she bought a sealskin coat. I have not 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 93 

heard of the result on that street. The street 
was full of those who are on small incomes, but 
I suppose the contagion spread, and that every- 
body had a sealskin coat, and that the people 
came out and cried, practically, not literally : 
" Though the heavens fall, we must have a seal- 
skin coat !" 

I was out West, and a minister of the Gospel 
told me, in Iowa, that his church and the neigh- 
borhood had been impoverished by the fact that 
they put mortgages on their farms in order to 
send their families to the Philadelphia Centen- 
nial. It was not respectable not to go to the 
Centennial. Between such evils and pauperism 
there is a very short step. The vast majority of 
children in your almshouses are there because 
their parents are drunken, or lazy, or recklessly 
improvident. 

I have no sympathy for skinflint saving, but 
I plead for 

CHRISTIAN PRUDENCE. 

You say it is impossible now to lay up anything 
for a rainy day. I know it, but we are at the 
daybreak of national prosperity. Some people 
think it is mean to turn the gas low when they 
go out of the parlor. They feel embarrassed if 



94 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

the door-bell rings before they have the hall 
lighted. They apologize for the plain meal, if 
you surprise them at the table. Well, it is mean 
if it is only to pile up a miserly hoard. But if 
it be to educate your children, if it be to give 
more help to your wife when she does not feel 
strong, if it be to keep your funeral day from 
being horrible beyond all endurance, because it 
is to be the disruption and annihilation of the 
domestic circle — if it be for that, then it is mag- 
nificent. 

There are those who are kept in poverty be- 
cause of their own fault. They might have been 
well off, but they smoked or chewed up their 
earnings, or they lived beyond their means, 
while others on the same wages and on the 
same salaries went onto competency. I know 
a man who was all the time complaining of his 
poverty and crying out against rich men, while 
he himself keeps two dogs, and chews and 
smokes, and is full to the chin with whiskey and 
beer. Wilkins Micawber said to David Cop- 
perfield, " Copperfield, my boy, one pound in- 
come, expenses twenty shillings and sixpence ; 
result, misery. But, Copperfield, my boy, one 
pound income, expenses nineteen shillings and 
six pence; result, happiness. ,, But, O work- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 95 

ingman of America, take your morning dram, 
and your noon dram, and your evening dram, 
and spend everything you have over for to- 
bacco and excursions, and you insure poverty 
for yourself and your children forever ! 

If by some generous fiat of the capitalists of 
this country, or by a new law of the Govern- 
ment of the United States, twenty-five per 
cent, or fifty per cent, or one hundred per 
cent were added to the wages of the working 
classes of America, it would be no advantage 
to hundreds of thousands of them unless they 
stopped strong drink. Aye, until they quit 
that evil habit, the more money, the more ruin, 
the more wages, the more holes in the bag. 

My plea this morning is to those working 
people who are in a 

DISCIPLESHIP TO WHISKEY 

bottle, the beer-mug, and the wine-flask. And 
what I say to them will not be more appropri- 
ate to the working classes than to the business 
classes, and the literary classes, and the profes- 
sional classes, and all classes, and not with the 
people of one age more than of all ages. Take 
one good square look at the suffering of the 
man whom strong drink has enthralled, and re- 



g6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

member that toward that goal multitudes are 
running. The disciple of alcoholism suffers the 

LOSS OF SELF-RESPECT. 

Just as soon as a man wakes up and finds 
that he is the captive of strong drink, he feels 
demeaned. I do not care how reckless he acts. 
He may say, " I don't care ;" he does care. He 
cannot look a pure man in the eye unless it is 
with positive force of resolution. Three-fourths 
of his nature is destroyed ; his self-respect is 
gone ; he says things he would not otherwise 
say ; he does thing he would not otherwise do. 
When a man is nine-tenths gone with strong 
drink, the first thing he wants to do is to per- 
suade you that he can stop any time he wants to. 
He cannot. The Philistines have bound him 
hand and foot, and shorn his locks, and put out 
his eyes, and are making him grind in the mill 
of a great horror. He cannot stop. I will 
prove it. He knows that his course is bringing 
ruin upon himself. He loves himself. If he 
could stop he would. He knows 'his course is 
bringing ruin upon his family. He loves them. 
He would stop if he could. He cannot. Per- 
haps he could three months or a year ago, not 
now. Just ask him to stop for a month. He 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 97 

cannot ; he knows he cannot, so he does not 
try. 

I had a friend who was for 



FIFTEEN YEARS GOING DOWN 

under this evil habit He had large means. 
He had given thousands of dollars to Bible 
societies and reformatory institutions of all 
sorts. He was very genial, very generous, and 
very lovable, and whenever he talked about 
this evil habit he would say, " I can stop any 
time." But he kept going on, going on, down, 
down, down. His family would say, " I wish 
you would stop." " Why," he would reply, " I 
can stop any time if I want to." After a while 
he had delirium tremens ; he had it twice ; and 
yet, after that, he said, " I could stop at any 
time if I wanted to." He is dead now. What 
killed him ? Rum ! Rum ! And yet among 
his last utterances was, " I can stop at any 
time." He did not stop it, because he could 
not stop it. ' Oh, there is a point in inebriation 
beyond which if a man goes he cannot stop ! 

One of these victims said to a Christian man, 
" Sir, if I were told that I couldn't get a drink 
until to-morrow night unless I had all my 



98 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

fingers cut off, I would say, ' Bring the hatchet 
and cut them off now.' " I have a dear friend 
in Philadelphia whose nephew came to him one 
day, and, when he was exhorted about his evil 
habit, said, " Uncle, I can't give it up. If there 
stood a cannon, and it was loaded, and a glass 
of wine were set on the mouth of that cannon, 
and I knew that you would fire it off just as I 
came up and took the glass, I would start, for 



I MUST HAVE IT." 



Oh, it is a sad thing for a man to wake up in 
this life and feel that he is a captive ! He says, 
" I could have got rid of this once, but I can't 
now. I might have lived an honorable life and 
died a Christian death ; but there is no hope for 
me now ; there is no escape for me. Dead, but 
not buried. I am a walking corpse, I am an 
apparition of what I once was. I am a caged 
immortal beating against the wires of my cage 
in this direction ; beating against the cage un- 
til there is blood on the wires and blood upon 
my soul, yet not able to get out. Destroyed 
without remedy !" 

I go on, and say that the disciple of rum 
suffers from the 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 99 

LOSS OF HEALTH. 

The older men in the congregation may re- 
member that some years ago Dr. Sewell went 
through this country and electrified the people 
by his lectures, in which he showed the effects 
of alcoholism on the human stomach. He had 
seven or eight diagrams by which he showed 
the devastation of strong drink upon the physi- 
cal system. There were thousands of people 
that turned back from that ulcerous sketch, 
swearing eternal abstinence from everything 
that could intoxicate. 

God only knows what the drunkard suffers. 
Pain files on every nerve, and travels every 
muscle, and gnaws every bone, and burns with 
every flame, and stings with every poison, and 
pulls at him with every torture. What reptiles 
crawl over his creeping limbs ! What fiends 
stand by his midnight pillow ! What groans 
tear his ear ! What horrors shiver through his 
soul ! Talk of the rack, talk of the Inquisi- 
tion, talk of the funeral pyre, talk of the crush- 
ing Juggernaut — he feels them all at once. 
Have you ever been in the ward of 

THE HOSPITAL 

where these inebriates are dying, the stench of 



IOO THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

their wounds driving back the attendants, their 
voices sounding through the night ? The 
keeper comes up and says, " Hush, now, be 
still ! Stop making all this noise !" But it is 
effectual only for a moment, for as soon as the 
keeper is gone they begin again, " Oh, God ! 
Oh, God ! Help ! Help ! Rum ! Give me 
rum ! Help ! Take them off me ! Take them 
off me ! Oh, God !" And then they shriek, 
and they rave, and they pluck out their hair by 
handfuls, and bite their nails into the quick, and 
then they groan, and they shriek, and they 
blaspheme, and they ask the keepers to kill 
them — "Stab me! Smother me! Strangle 
me ! Take the devils off me !" Oh, it is no 
fancy sketch ! That thing is going on now all 
up and down the land, and I tell you further 
that this is going to be the death that some of 
you will die. I know it. I see it coming. 
Again, the inebriate suffers through the 

LOSS OF HOME. 

I do not care how much he loves his wife and 
children, if this passion for strong drink has 
mastered him, he will do the most outrageous 
things; and if he could not get drink in any 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. IOI 

other way, he would sell his family into eter- 
nal bondage. How many homes have been 
broken up in that way no one but God knows. 
Oh, is there anything that will so destroy a man 
for this life and damn him for the life that is to 
come ? I hate that strong drink. With all 
the concentrated energies of my soul I hate it. 
Do not tell me that a man can be happy when 
he knows that he is breaking his wife's heart and 
clothing his children with rags. Why, there 
are on the roads and streets of this land to-day 
little children, barefooted, unwashed, and un- 
kempt — want on every patch of their faded 
dress and on every wrinkle of their premature- 
ly old countenances, who would have been in 
churches to-day, and as well clad as you are, 
but for the fact that rum destroyed their 
parents and drove them into the grave. O 
rum, thou foe of God, thou despoiler of homes, 
thou recruiting officer of the pit, I hate thee ! 

But my subject takes a deeper tone, and 
that is, that the unfortunate of whom I speak 
suffers from the 

LOSS OF THE SOUL. 

The Bible intimates that in the future world, 



102 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

if we are unforgiven here, our bad passions and 
appetites, unrestrained, will go along with us 
and make our torment there. So that, I sup- 
pose, when an inebriate wakes up in the last 
world, he will feel an infinite thirst clawing on 
him. Now, down in the world, although he 
may have been very poor, he could beg or he 
could steal five cents with which to get that 
which would slake his thirst for a little while ; 
but in eternity where is the rum to come from ? 
Oh, the deep, exhausting, exasperating, ever- 
lasting thirst of the drunkard in hell ! Why, if 
a fiend came up to earth for some infernal work 
in a grog-shop, and should go back taking on 
its wing just one drop of that for which the 
inebriate in the lost world longs, what excite- 
ment would it make there ! Put that one drop 
from off the fiend's wing on the tip of the 
tongue of the destroyed inebriate ; let the 
liquid brightness just touch it ; let the drop be 
very small, if it only have in it the smack of 
alcoholic drink ; let that drop just touch the 
lost inebriate in the lost world, and he would 
spring to his feet and cry, " That is rum, aha ! 
That is rum !" And it would wake up the 
echoes of the damned — " Give me rum ! Give 
me rum ! Give me rum !" In the future world 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 103 

I do not believe that it will be the absence of 
God that will make the drunkard's sorrow. I 
do not believe that it will be the absence of 
light. I do not believe that it will be the ab- 
sence of holiness. I think it will be the absence 
of rum. Oh, " look not upon the wine when 
it is red, when it moveth itself aright in the 
cup, for at the last it biteth like a serpent, and 
it stingeth like an adder." 
It is about time that we have 



ANOTHER WOMAN'S CRUSADE 



like that which swept through Ohio ten or 
twelve years ago. With prayer and song the 
women went into the groggeries, and whole 
neighborhoods, towns, and cities were redeemed 
by their Christian heroics. Thirty women 
cleared out the rum traffic from a village of one 
thousand inhabitants. If thirty women, sur- 
charged of the Holy Ghost, could renovate a 
town of a thousand, three thousand consecrated 
women, resolved to give themselves no peace 
until this crime was extirpated from this city, 
could in six months clear out three fourths of 
the grog-shops of Brooklyn. If there be three 
thousand women now in this city who will put 



104 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

their hands and their hearts to the work, I will 
take the contract for driving out all these moral 
nuisances from the city — at any rate, three 
fourths of them — in three months. If, when 
that host of three thousand consecrated women 
is marshalled, there be no one to lead them, 
then, as a minister of the Most High God, I 
will offer to take my position at the front of 
the host, and I will cry to them, "Come on, 
ye women of Christ, with your songs and your 
prayers ! Some of you take the enemy's right 
wing and some the left wing. Forward ! The 
Lord of Hosts is with us ; the God of Jacob is 
our refuge ! Down with the dram-shops !" 

But not waiting for those mouths of hell to 
close, let me advise the working and the busi- 
ness classes, and all classes, to stop strong drink. 
While I declared some time ago that there was 
a point beyond which a man could not stop, I 
want to tell you that while a man cannot stop 
in his own strength, the Lord God by His 
grace can help him to stop at any time. I was 
in a room in New York where there were 
many men who had been reclaimed from 
drunkenness. I heard their testimony, and for 
the first time in my life there flashed out a 
truth I never understood. They said, "We 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 105 

were victims of strong drink. We tried to give 
it up, but always failed ; but somehow since we 
gave our hearts to Christ, He has taken care of 
us." I believe that the time will soon come 
when the grace of God will show its power not 
only to save man's soul, but his body, and re- 
construct, purify, elevate, and redeem it. 

I verily believe that, although you feel grap- 
pling at the roots of your tongues an almost 
omnipotent thirst, if you will give your heart to 
God, He will help you by His grace to con- 
quer. Try it It is 

YOUR LAST CHANCE. 

I have looked off upon the desolation. Sit- 
ting in our religious assemblages there are a 
good many people in awful peril ; and, judging 
from ordinary circumstances, there is not one 
chance in five thousand that they will get clear 
of it. There are men in my congregation from 
Sabbath to Sabbath of whom I must make the 
remark, that if they do not change their 
course, within ten years they will, as to their 
bodies, lie down in drunkards' graves ; and as 
to their souls, lie down in a drunkard's perdi- 
tion. I know that is an awful thing to say, but 
I cannot help saying it. 



106 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

Oh, beware ! You have not yet been cap- 
tured. Beware! Whether the beverage be 
poured in golden chalice or pewter mug, in the 
foam at the top, in white letters, let there be 
spelled out to your soul, " Beware !" When 
the books of Judgment are open, and ten mil- 
lion drunkards come up to get their doom, I 
want you to bear witness that I, this morning, 
in the fear of God and in the love for your soul, 
told you, with all affection and with all kind- 
ness, to beware of that which has already ex- 
erted its influence upon your family, blowing 
out some of its lights — a premonition of the 
blackness of darkness forever. 

Oh, if you could only hear this morning In- 
temperance with drunkards' bones drumming 
on the head of the liquor-cask the Dead March 
of immortal souls, methinks the very glance of 
a wine-cup would make you shudder, and the 
color of the liquor would make you think of 
the blood of the soul, and the foam on the top 
of the cup would remind you of the froth on 
the maniac's lip ; and you would go home from 
this service and kneel down and pray God that, 
rather than your children should become cap- 
tives of this evil habit, you would like to carry 
them out some bright spring day to the ceme- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 107 

tery, and put them away to the last sleep, un- 
til at the call of the south wind the flowers 
would come up all over the grave — sweet 
prophecies of the resurrection ! God has a 
balm for such a wound ; but what flower of 
comfort ever grew on the blasted heath of a 
drunkard's sepulchre ? 



108 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 



BLACK SERVANTS OF THE SKY. 

" And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in 
the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening/' — 
i Kings, xvii. 6. 

The ornithology of the Bible is a very inter- 
esting study. The stork which knoweth her 
appointed time. The common sparrows teach- 
ing the lesson of God's providence. The os- 
triches of the desert, by careless incubation, 
illustrating the recklessness of parents who do 
not take enough pains with their children. The 
eagle symbolizing riches which take wings and 
fly away. The pelican emblemizing solitude. 
The bat, a flake of the darkness. The night 
hawk, the ossifrage, the cuckoo, the lapwing, 
the osprey, by the command of God in Leviti- 
cus, flung out of the world's bill of fare. 

I would like to have been with Audubon as 
he went through the woods, with gun and pen- 
cil, bringing down and sketching the fowls of 
heaven, his unfolded portfolio thrilling all 
Christendom. What 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. . IO9 

WONDERFUL CREATURES 

of God the birds are ! Some of them, this 
morning, like the songs of heaven let loose, 
bursting through the gates of heaven. Consider 
their feathers, which are clothing and convey- 
ance at the same time ; the nine vertebrae of the 
neck, the three eyelids to each eye, the third 
eyelid an extra curtain for graduating the light 
of the sun. Some of these birds scavengers and 
some of them orchestra. Thank God for quail's 
whistle, and lark's carol, and the twitter of the 
wren, called by the ancients 

THE KING OF BIRDS, 

because when the fowls of heaven went into a 
contest as to who should fly the highest, and the 
eagle swung nearest the sun, a wren on the back 
of the eagle, after the eagle was exhausted, 
sprang up much higher, and so was called by 
the ancients the king of birds. Consider those 
of them that have golden crowns and crests, 
showing them to be feathered imperials. And 
listen to the humming-bird's serenade in the ear 
of the honeysuckle. Look at the belted king- 
fisher, striking like a dart from sky to water. 
Listen to the voice of the owl, giving the key- 
note to all croakers. And behold the condor 



I 10 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

among the Andes, battling with the reindeer. 
I do not know whether an aquarium or aviary 
is the best altar from which to worship God. 

There is an incident in my text that baffles 
all the ornithological wonders of the world. 
The grain crop had been cut off. Famine was 
in the land. In a cave by the brook Cherith 
sat a minister of God, 

ELIJAH, WAITING 

for something to eat. Why did he not go to 
the neighbors ? There were no neighbors ; it 
was a wilderness. Why did he not pick some 
of the berries? There were none. If there 
had been, they would have been -dried up. 
Seated one morning at the mouth of his cave, 
the prophet sees a flock of birds approaching. 
Oh, if they were only partridges, or if he only 
had an arrow with which to bring them down ! 
But as they come nearer, he finds they are not 
comestible, but unclean, and the eating of them 
would be spiritual death. The strength of their 
beak, the length of their wings, the blackness 
of their color, their loud, harsh " cruck ! 
crack !" prove them to be ravens. 

They whirr around about the prophet's head, 
and then they come on fluttering wing and 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. Ill 

pause on the level of his lips, and one of the 
ravens brings bread, and another raven brings 
meat, and after they have discharged their- tiny 
cargo they wheel past, and others come, until 
after awhile the prophet has enough, and these 
black servants of the wilderness table are gone. 
For six months, and some say a whole year, 
morning and evening, a breakfast and 

A SUPPER-BELL 

sounded as these ravens rang out on the air 
their " cruck ! cruck !" Guess where they got 
the food from. The old rabbins say they got it 
from the kitchen of King Ahab. Others say 
that the ravens got their food from pious 
Obadiah, who was in the habit of feeding the 
persecuted. Some say that the ravens brought 
the food to their young in the trees, and that 
Elijah had only to climb up and get it. Some 
say that the whole story is improbable; for 
these were carnivorous birds, and the food they 
carried was the torn flesh of living beasts, and 
that ceremonially unclean ; or it was carrion, 
and it would not have been fit for the prophet. 
Some say they were not ravens at all, but that 
the word translated " ravens" in my text ought 
to have been translated " Arabs ;" so it would 



112 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

have read, " The Arabs brought bread and flesh 
in the morning, and bread and flesh in the 
evening." Anything but admit the Bible to be 
true. 

Hew away at this miracle until all the miracle 
is gone. Go on with the depleting process, but 
know, my brother, that you are robbing only 
one man — and that is yourself — of one of the 
most comforting, beautiful, pathetic, and tri- 
umphant lessons in all the ages. I can tell you 

WHO THESE PURVEYORS WERE 

— they were ravens. I can tell you who 
freighted them with provisions — God. I can 
tell you who launched them — God. I can tell 
you who taught them which way to fly — God. 
I can tell you who told them at what cave to 
swoop — God. I can tell you who introduced 
raven to prophet and prophet to raven — God. 
There is one passage I will whisper in your ear, 
for I would not want to utter it aloud, lest 
some one should drop down under its power — 
"If any man shall take away from the words 
of the prophecy of this book, God shall take 
away His part out of the book of life and out 
of the Holy City." 

While, then, this morning we watch the 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 113 

ravens feeding Elijah, let the swift dove of 
God's Spirit sweep down the sky with divine 
food, and on outspread wing pause at the lip of 
every soul hungering for comfort. 

On the banks of what rivers have been the 
great battles of the world ? While you are 
looking over the map of the world to answer 
that, I will tell you that 

THE GREAT CONFLICT 

to-day is on the Thames, on the Hudson, on the 
Mississippi, on the Kennebec, on the Savannah, 
on the Rhine, on the Nile, on the Ganges, on 
the Hoang-Ho. It is a battle that has been 
going on for six thousand years. The troops 
engaged in it are fourteen hundred millions, 
and those who have fallen are vaster in num- 
ber than those who march. It is a battle for 
bread. 

Sentimentalists sit in a cushioned chair, in 
their pictured study, with their slippered feet 
on a damask ottoman, and say that this world 
is a great scene of avarice and greed. It does 
not seem so to me. If it were not for the 

ABSOLUTE NECESSITIES 

of the cases, nine tenths of the stores, factories, 



114 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. - 

shops, banking-houses of the land would be 
closed to-morrow. Who is that man delving in 
the Colorado hills? or toiling in a New England 
factory ? or going through a roll of bills in the 
bank ? or measuring a fabric on the counter ? 
He is a champion sent forth in behalf of some 
home circle that has to be cared for, in behalf 
of some church of God that has to be supported, 
in behalf of some asylum of mercy that has to 
be sustained. Who is that woman bending 
over the sewing-machine, or carrying the bundle, 
or sweeping the room, or mending the garment, 
or sweltering at the washtub ? That is Deborah, 
one of the Lord's heroines, battling against 
Amalekitish want, which comes down with iron 
chariot to crush her and hers. 

THE GREAT QUESTION 

with the vast majority of people to-day is not 
"Home Rule," but whether there shall be any 
home to rule ; not one of tariff but whether 
they shall have anything to tax. The great 
question with the vast majority of people is, 
" How shall I support my family ? How shall 
I meet my notes ? How shall I pay my rent ? 
How shall I give food, clothing, and education 
to those who are dependent upon me ?" Oh, 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 115 

if God would help me to-day to assist you in 
the solution of that problem, the happiest man 
in this house would be your preacher ! I have 
gone out on a cold morning with expert sports- 
men to hunt for pigeons ; I have gone out on 
the meadows to hunt for quail ; I have gone 
out on the marsh to hunt for reed-birds ; but 
this morning I am out for ravens. 

I. Notice, in the first place in the story of 
my text, that these winged caterers came to 
Elijah 

• 

DIRECTLY FROM GOD. 

" I have commanded the ravens that they 
feed thee," we find God saying in an adjoining 
passage. They did not come out of some other 
cave. They did not just happen to alight there. 
God freighted them, God launched them, and 
God told them by what cave to swoop. That 
is the same God that is going to supply you. 
He is your Father. You would have to make 
an elaborate calculation before you could tell 
me how many pounds of food and how many 
yards of clothing would be necessary for you 
and your family ; but God knows without any 
calculation. You have a plate at His table, 
and you are going to be waited on, unless you 



Il6 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

act like a naughty child, and kick, and scramble, 
and pound saucily the plate and try to upset 
things. 

God has a vast family, and everything is 
methodized, and you are going to be served if 
you will only wait your turn. God has already 
ordered all the suits of clothes you will ever 
need, down to the last suit in which you shall 
be laid out. God has already ordered all the 
food you will ever eat, down to the last crumb 
that will be put in your mouth in the dying 
sacrament. It may not be just the kind of food 
or apparel we would prefer. 

THE SENSIBLE PARENT 

depends on his own judgment as to what ought 
to be the apparel and the food of the minor in 
the family. The child would say, "Give me 
sugars and confections." "Oh, no," says the 
parent ; " you must have something plainer 
first." The child would say, "Oh, give me 
these great blotches of color in the garment." 
" No," says the parent ; " that wouldn't be suit- 
able." 

Now, God is our Father and we are minors, 
and He is going to clothe us and feed us, 
although he may not always yield to our infan- 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. I17 

tile wish for sweets and glitter. These ravens 
of the text did not bring pomegranates from 
the glittering platter of King Arab. They 
brought bread and meat. God had all the 
heavens and the earth before Him and under 
Him, and yet he sends this plain food, because 
it was best for Elijah to have it. Oh, be 
strong, my hearer, in the fact that the same 
God is going to supply you ! It is never 
"hard times" with Him. His ship never 
breaks on the rocks. His banks never fail. 
He has the supply for you and He has the 
means for sending it. He has not only the 
cargo, but the ship. If it were necessary, He 
would swing out from the heavens a flock of 
ravens reaching from His gate to yours, until 
the food would be flung down the sky from 
beak to beak and from talon to talon. 

II. Notice again in this story of the text, 
that the ravens did not allow Elijah to hoard 
up a surplus. They did not bring enough on 
Monday to last all the week. They did not 
bring enough one morning to last until the 
next morning. They came twice a day, and 
brought just enough for one time. You know 
as well as I, that 



Il8 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 
THE GREAT FRET 

of the world is that we want a surplus ; we want 
the ravens to bring enough for fifty years. 
You have more confidence in the Fulton Bank, 
or Nassau Bank, or Bank of England than you 
have in the Royal Bank of Heaven. You say, 
" All that is very poetic, but you may have the 
black ravens ; give me the gold eagles." We 
had better be content with just enough. If in 
the morning your family eat up all the food 
there is in the house, do not sit down and cry 
and say, " I don't know where the next meal is 
to come from." About five, or six, or seven 
o'clock in the morning just look up, and you 
will see two black spots on the sky, and you 
will hear the flapping of wings, and instead of 
Edgar A. Poe's insane raven alighting on the 
chamber door, " only this and nothing more," 
you will find Elijah's two ravens, or two ravens 
of the Lord, the one bringing bread and the 
other bringing meat — plumed butcher and 
baker. 

God is infinite in resource. When the city 
of Rochelle was besieged and the inhabitants 
were dying of the famine, the tides washed up 
on the beach as never before, and as never 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. II9 

since, enough shell-fish to feed the whole city. 
God is good. There is no mistake about that. 
History tells us that in 1555 in England there 
was a great drought. The crops failed ; but in 
Essex, on the rocks, in a place where they had 
neither sown nor cultured, a great crop of peas 
grew until they filled a hundred measures ; and 
there were blossoming vines enough, promising 
as much more. 

But why go so far ? I can give you 

A FAMILY INCIDENT. 

Some generations back there was a great 
drought in Connecticut, New England. The 
water disappeared from the hills, and the farm- 
ers living on the hills drove their cattle down 
toward the valleys, and had them supplied at 
the wells and fountains of the neighbors. But 
these after a while began to fail, and the neigh- 
bors said to Mr. Birdseye, of whom I shall 
speak, " You must not send your flocks and 
herds down here any more ; our wells are giving 
out." Mr. Birdseye, the old Christian man, 
gathered his family at the altar, and with his 
family he gathered the slaves of the household 
— for bondage was then in vogue in Connecti- 
cut — and on their knees before God they cried 



120 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

for water ; and the family story is, that there 
was weeping and great sobbing at that altar 
that the family might not perish for lack of 
water, and that the herds and flocks might not 
perish. 

The family rose from the altar. Mr. Birds- 
eye, the old man, took his staff and walked out 
over the hills, and in a place where he had 
been scores of times, without noticing anything 
particular, he saw the ground was very dark, 
and he took his staff and turned up the ground, 
and water started; and he beckoned to his 
servants, and they came and brought pails and 
buckets until all the family and all the flocks 
and the herds were cared for ; and then they 
made troughs reaching from that place down to 
the house and barn, and the water flowed, and 
it is a living fountain to-day. 

Now I call that old grandfather Elijah, and 
I call that brook that began to roll then, and is 
rolling still, the brook Cherith ; and the lesson 
to me and to all who hear it is, when you are 
in great stress of circumstances 

PRAY AND DIG, 

dig and pray, and pray and dig. How does that 
passage go ? " The mountains shall depart and 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 121 

the hills be removed, but My loving-kindness 
shall not fail." If your merchandise, if your 
mechanism, if your husbandry, fail, look out for 
ravens. If you have in your despondency put 
God on trial and condemned Him as guilty of 
cruelty, I move this morning for a new trial. If 
the biography of your life is ever written, I 
will tell you what the first chapter, and the 
middle chapter, and the last chapter will be 
about, if it is written accurately. The first 
chapter about mercy, the middle chapter about 
mercy, the last chapter about mercy. The 
mercy that hovered over your cradle. The 
mercy that will hover over your grave. The 
mercy that will cover all between. 

III. Again, this story of the text impresses 
me that relief came to this prophet with the 
most unexpected and with seemingly impossible 
conveyance. If it had been a robin-redbreast, 
or a musical meadow lark, or a meek turtle- 
dove, or a sublime albatross that had brought 
the food to Elijah, it would not have been so 
surprising. But no. It was a bird so fierce and 
inauspicate that we have fashioned one of our 
most forceful and repulsive words out of it — 
ravenous. That bird has a passion for picking 
out the eyes of men and of animals. It loves 



122 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

to maul the sick and the dying. It swallows 
with vulturous guzzle everything it can put its 
beak on ; and yet all the food Elijah gets for 
six months or a year is from ravens. So your 
supply is going to come from 

AN UNEXPECTED SOURCE. 

You think some great-hearted, generous man 
will come along and give you his name on the 
back of your note, or he will go security for 
you in some great enterprise. No, he will not. 
God will open the heart of some Shylock 
toward you. Your relief will come from 
the most unexpected quarter. The Providence 
which seemed ominous will be to you more 
than that which seemed auspicious. It will not 
be a chaffinch with breast and wing dashed with 
white and brown and chestnut ; it will be a 
black raven. 

Here is where we all make our mistake, and 
that is in regard to 

THE COLOR OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE. 

A white providence comes to us, and we say, 
" Oh, it is mercy !" Then a black providence 
comes towards us, and we say, " Oh, that is 
disaster !" The white providence comes to you, 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 23 

and you have great business success, and you 
have fifty thousand dollars, and you get proud, 
and you get independent of God, and you be- 
gin to feel that the prayer, " Give me this day 
my daily bread," is inappropriate for you, for 
you have made provision for a hundred years. 
Then a black providence comes, and it sweeps 
everything away, and then you begin to pray, 
and you begin to feel your dependence, and be- 
gin to be humble before God, and you cry out 
for treasures in heaven. The black providence 
brought you salvation. The white providence 
brought you ruin. That which seemed to be 
harsh, and fierce, and dissonant was your great- 
est mercy. It was a raven. There was 

A CHILD BORN 

in your house. All your friends congrat- 
ulated you. The other children of the family 
stood amazed looking at the new-comer, and 
asked a great many questions, genealogical and 
chronological You said — and you said truth- 
fully — that a white angel flew through the 
room and left the little one there. That little 
one stood with its two feet in the very sanctu- 
ary of your affection, and with its two hands it 
took hold of the altar of your soul. But one 



124 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

day there came one of the three scourges of 
children — scarlet-fever, or croup, or diphtheria — 
and all that bright scene vanished. The chat- 
tering, the strange questions, the pulling at the 
dresses as you crossed the floor — all ceased. 

As the great Friend of children stooped 
down and leaned toward that cradle, and took 
the little one in His arms and walked away 
with it into the bower of eternal summer, your 
eye began to follow Him, and 

YOU FOLLOWED THE TREASURE 

He carried, and you have been following them 
ever since ; and instead of thinking of heaven 
only once a week, as formerly, you are thinking 
of it all the time, and you are more pure and 
tender-hearted than you used to be, and you 
are patiently waiting for the daybreak. It is 
not self-righteousness in you to acknowledge 
that you are a better man than you used to be 
— you are a better woman than you used to be. 
What was it that brought you the sanctifying 
blessing ? Oh, it was the dark shadow on the 
nursery ; it was the dark shadow on the short 
grave ; it was the dark shadow on your broken 
heart ; it was the brooding of a great black 
trouble ; it was a raven — it was a raven ! Dear 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 25 

Lord, teach this people that white providences 
do not always mean advancement, and that 
black providences do not always mean retro- 
gression. 

Children of God, get up out of your de- 
spondency. The Lord never had so 

MANY RAVENS 

as He has this morning, Fling your fret and 
worry to the winds. Sometimes under the vex- 
ations of life you feel like my little girl of four 
years, who said, under some childish vexation, 
14 Oh, I wish I could go to heaven and see God 
and pick flowers !" He will let you go when 
the right time comes to pick flowers. Until 
then, whatever you want, pray for. I suppose 
Elijah prayed pretty much all the time. Tre- 
mendous work behind him. Tremendous work 
before him. God has no spare ravens for idlers 
or for people who are prayerless. I put it in 
the boldest shape possible, and I am willing to 
risk my eternity on it : ask God in the right 
way for what you want, and you shall have it 
if it is best for you. 

Mrs. Jane Pithey, of Chicago, a well-known 
Christian woman, was left by her husband a 
widow with one half dollar and a cottage. She 



126 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

was palsied, and had a mother ninety years of 
age to support. The widowed soul every day 
asked God for all that was needed in the house- 
hold, and the servant even was astonished at 
the precision with which God answered the 
prayers of that woman, item by item, item by 
item. One day, rising from the family altar, 
the servant said, "You have not asked for coal, 
and 

THE COAL IS OUT." 

Then they stood and prayed for the coal. 
One hour after that the servant threw open the 
door and said, " The coal has come." A gen- 
erous man, whose name I could give you, had 
sent — as never before and never since — a sup- 
ply of coal. You cannot understand it. I do. 
Ravens ! Ravens ! 

My friend, you have a right to argue from 
precedent that God is going to take care of you. 
Has He not done it two or three times every 
day ? That is most marvellous. I look back 
and I wonder that God has given me food 
three times a day regular all my lifetime, never 
missing but once, and then I was lost in the 
mountains ; but that very morning and that 
very night I met the ravens. 



THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 1 27 

Oh, the Lord is so good that I wish all this 
people would 

TRUST HIM 

with the two lives — the life you are now living 
and that which every tick of the watch and 
every stroke of the clock inform you is ap- 
proaching. Bread for your immortal soul comes 
to-day. See ! They alight on the platform. 
They alight on the backs of all the pews. They 
swing among the arches. Ravens ! Ravens ! 
" Blessed are they that hunger after righteous- 
ness, for they shall be filled." To all the sin- 
ning, and the sorrowing, and the tempted deliv- 
erance comes this hour. Look down, and you 
see nothing but your spiritual deformities. 
Look back, and you see nothing but wasted 
opportunity. Cast your eye forward, and you 
have a fearful looking for judgment and fiery 
indignation which shall devour the adversary. 
But look up, and you behold the whipped 
shoulders of an interceding Christ, and the face 
of a pardoning God, and the irradiation of an 
opening heaven. I hear .the whirr of their 
wings. Do you not feel the rush of the air on 
your cheek ? Ravens ! Ravens ! 

There is only one question I want to ask : 



128 THE BATTLE FOR BREAD. 

How many of this audience are willing to trust 
God for the supply of their bodies, and trust 
the Lord Jesus Christ for the redemption of 
their immortal souls? Amid the clatter of the 
hoofs and the clang of the wheels of the judg- 
ment-chariot, the whole matter will be demon- 
strated. 



